Considerations on the eucharist

I

GERBET ON THE EUCHARIST.

7 /^ t *~0*+-%r&£,-lt^*~** Q***CC*&"-'

CONSIDERATIONS

THE EUCHARIST,

VIEWED AS

THE GENERATIVE DOGMA

OF

CATHOLIC PIETY,

CransIateD from tfje $ rettcf)
THE ABBE^PH. GERBET,

BY A CATHOLIC CLERGYMAN.

LONDON :

PUBLISHED BY C. DOLMAN, 61, NEW BOND STREET.

Entered at Stationers' Hall.

TO THE

LIGHT KEY. DR. 3IUEPHY, R. C. BISHOP 01 CORK.

MY LORD,

Accept the first English version of a Work which
has already obtained a high European reputation. It is a
feeble effort to transfuse into our language the luminous views,
as well as the condensed and eloquent reasoning of the Abbe
Gerbet on the subject of the Eucharist.

Commenced under your Lordship's auspices, I gladly
avail myself of your permission to present it in its complete
form to the Catholics of this country, under the sanction of a
name which cannot fail to augment considerably its circulation
among the lovers of Religion and Literature.

Believe me,
My Lord,
With every sentiment of respect,

Your Lordship's devoted subject,

The Translator.

PEEF ACE.

This work is neither a dogmatical treatise, nor a
book of devotion, but something intermediate,
belonging to a class which forms the link that unites
these two orders of ideas.

Religion nourishes the understanding with truth
and the heart with sentiment. Hence there are two
modes of viewing it — the one rational — the other
edifying. From this two-fold aspect there arises
another point of view, in which we consider the
connexion of truths in relation to the developement
of love in the human soul. It is in this light we are
about to view the' mystery on which Catholic worship
is based, In the first place, we observe that the
Eucharistic dogma, is the complement of the primi-
tive faith and worship of mankind; so that its
detachment from religion would destroy the beautiful
harmony of all the truths of which the latter is
constituted.

After having viewed it in its principle, and, if we

viii

PREFACE.

may so express it, in its germ deposited in the bosom
of the primitive religion, we glance at it in its results,
namely in that manifestation of love of which it is
the inexhaustible source ; and we demonstrate that
the order of sentiments which it produces and
upholds is the complete developement, or the very
perfection of the sentiments inspired by primitive
faith ; so that it cannot be retrenched from religion
without assailing its vital principle — namely the spirit
of life. This mystery is the heart of Christianity.
Such in short is the object of this treatise.

Nothing being isolated in religion, which like God
himself is essentially one, it is necessary, in order
that it may be fully understood, to view each of its
parts, not separately, but in its relation to the general
plan of Christianity ; and the more clearly we con-
ceive this admirable unity, the more love ought to
increase with intelligence. If in this peculiar view
this work will be found to contain some notions on
the adorable present of Divine wisdom and goodness,
Catholics will find therein new motives for attaching
themselves to their faith, which will serve to nourish
their devotion.

PREFACE.

ix

We no less fondly hope that it may contribute to
remove the prejudices of our erring brethren, by
shewing them this mystery in various aspects,
hitherto unknown to many among them.

Owing to the happy change which is so perceptible
among Protestants, the most inconsiderable efforts
directed to this quarter, are attended at the present
day, with pleasing results. The designs of Provi-
dence are becoming manifest. The church continually
repairs by conversions the losses caused by apostacy.
The places which infidelity has left vacant are filled
up by Protestants. This two -fold movement which
impelling some to the very boundaries of error preci-
pitates them into scepticism and which brings back
others from the regions of error and doubt into the
bosom of Faith, is the grand spectacle which has
been reserved for our age. It is only commenced,
but let us be observant, and we shall witness its
developement which henceforward no human power
can arrest.

In being thus explicit as to the result of Protes-
tantism, we hope that neither our words or intentions
may be misunderstood. It is not a personal question,

X

PRETACE.

nor is it a contrast instituted between any given
portion of a Protestant and Catholic population, no !
it is the action of Catholicism taken in its widest
sense and compared to that of Protestantism. Severe
logic which is founded on general facts does not suffer
us to alter the consequence in favour of the exceptions
which charity may be inclined to make. The
Protestants of whom we speak would deceive them-
selves if they fancied that Catholicism prohibits us to
be just towards whatever merits respect. On the
contrary, the more deeply we are convinced that
Protestantism by its peculiar action is subversive of
Christianity, the more are we inclined to esteem those
who by the uprightness of their will resist its baneful
influence ; as we admire those plants which flourish
in an ungrateful soil. In truth, such Christian souls
have been nurtured in a belief more ancient than
that of the Reformation, and which are so little akin
to it that the latter destroys them by its developement.
Their humble and docile dispositions belong not to
Protestantism, for in proclaiming the independence
of individual reason, pride has been made the first law
of each intelligence. Indeed it has been acknowledged

PREFACE.

xi

by a very observant clergyman of the Protestant
establishment, that a volume could be filled with
the Catholicism of these Protestants. It is to such
in particular that this work appeals.

Though it was not our intention to furnish the
infidel party with a proof of religion ; such however
is the character of Christianity, that we could not
view it in any particular respect without being led
to recognize its truth in this point of view, or,
in other words, its radical identity with the tradition
of the human race, the basis of all belief and virtue.
To invalidate this basis on a single point, is to
destroy it, and, before this plan be adopted, would it
not be prudent to reflect deeply on all its conse-
quences ?

THE EUCHARIST— THE GENERATIVE DOGMA

OF

CATHOLIC PIETY.

CHAPTER I.

On faith in a Divine presence, and union of
God with Man.

Religion, such as it has been conceived in all ages,
is based on the belief of a supernatural world. What
is more supernatural than God '? The immense, the
divine system, of which the present world is only a
transient point, does not come within the grasp of
our intelligence. Creation and a future life tran-
scend the order of things submitted to our investiga-
tion. If the beginning and the end, the alpha and
omega of existence, are supernatural, why may not
there be a similar series of terms destined to form,
during the present life, a transition from the one to

2

GERBET ON

the other ? When the first, and last pages of a book
contain symbolic characters, should we be astonished
to find similar ones on the intermediate pages ?
The contrary would be far more surprising.

But what is supernatural with respect to us, is
natural in another point of view, if it be considered
as it bears on the general plan of divine Providence,
in which everything is executed according to the laws
of eternal power, wisdom, and love. Each species
of intelligent creatures being confined to a particular
sphere of existence, the supernatural, relatively to
each of these, is only the projection of some laws of
a world, superior to that which they inhabit. What-
ever proceeds beyond the combinations of the present
order, is the means by which this order connects
itself with the revolutions of the future.

Thus the general belief in a union of man with
God, in a union which constitutes a connecting link
between heaven and earth, always implied faith in a
divine action, determined according to laws higher
than those by which this world is governed, but which,
at the same time, enter into the condition of our
present existence, for we ourselves must concur in

4

THE EUCHARIST.

3

effecting this union, which results from this two-fold
relation which must never be forgotten.

The human race always believed that God was
present to man, not merely as the first cause is present
to creatures in general, but by a particular mode of
relation, suited to his free will, corresponding to his
various necessities, descending, if it may be so ex-
pressed, into the limits of his being; and, in this sense,
a belief in the human presence of the Divinity always
prevailed. The God whose name causes the human
heart to throb, is not an abstract-geometrical God,
holding a relation, only according to the mathematical
laws of the universe, with creatures endowed with
liberty. In such a system, which reduces the divine
action to the mechanism of the universe, nature raises
itself up as a wall of brass between man and his
Creator. No communion, no active relation, no
society of love, exists between them ; and Deism
fully developed, is at bottom the absence of the
Divinity, as Atheism is its negation.

Such is not the God that tradition, the ancient
historian of mankind, proclaims. For it attests that,
at the beginning, God established with his creatures

*

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a mode of communication * perfectly suited to their
two-fold nature- — spiritual and corporal. What does
it matter that we cannot clearly comprehend the
nature of this communication ? Are our ideas of
creation itself more clear ? And who does not perceive
that, in every possible hypothesis, the commencement
of things is involved in mystery. In rejecting the
prodigies of divine goodness, we do not escape
a miracle ; we only substitute for them prodigies of a
different kind. For what can be imagined, more
directly opposed to all authentic facts, than that
primitive state dreamed of by philosophy, in which
a band of human ourang-outangs, wearied from
devouring one another, concluded by summoning into
existence society, language and intelligence ; the
animal creators of man ? It is not a little remarkable,
that there is no medium between the terrestrial
paradise, the recollection of which has been so fondly
preserved by all the nations of the earth, and the
terrestrial hell substituted for it by philosophy. No
sooner is faith in divine love rejected, than hatred,
in its most hideous form, takes its stand at the cradle
of the human race.

THE EUCHARIST.

5

Though the primitive order of divine communica-
tion, was impeded by this original crime,* which, as
Voltaire remarks, was the basis of all the ancient
theology, f nevertheless mankind was convinced that
God had not entirely abandoned fallen humanity to
itself, and that, though he had ceased to be personally
present, he mercifully deigned to be present by his
healing action. There is no dogma more universal
than that of grace, nor should this be a matter of
astonishment ; as it was the conservative dogma of
hope. The ancient philosophy of the East represents
the celestial genii themselves, celebrating in their
hymns the God " who condemns evil works, and who
gives efficacious aid to perform good ones. Man has
free will ; but it is written in the Veda7i, that works
of mercy are always performed by the grace of God." J

Man always prayed, and consequently always
believed that there existed a divine-permanent action
exercised, not according to the laws of motion, which
govern the material world, but according to other
laws peculiar to the free motions of the soul. This

* Vide note I. t Quest, on the Encyclop.

Oupnek ' hat, 9, No. 91— Ibid 27.

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powerful faith swayed man even when bowed to earth
beneath the dominion of his passions. When the
slaves of vice supplicated heaven for the false goods
they idolized, the instinct of this sacred duty mani-
fested itself even in their unhallowed petitions. But
whoever sincerely aspired after virtue, implored from
on high support for his weakness. The various
liturgies of antiquity contain, on this point, many
affecting invocations ; and so deeply was this want
felt, that the Pagan worship, in one of its most
enormous abuses, was, according to Cicero, but a
corruption of prayer. " The passions, says he, have
been deified, as their effects cannot be restrained
otherwise than by divine power."*

When the will of man, borne by an ardent desire,
is elevated to the supreme will, the miracle of divine
intervention is accomplished. Prayer, " which makes
God present to us,"f is a sort of communion by which
man nourishes himself with grace, and makes it a

* Quarum omnium rerum quia vis erat tanta, ut sine Deo
regi not posset, ipsa res Deorum numen obtinuit. Quo ex genere
Cupidinis, et voluptatis Lubentince Veneris vocubala con-
secrata sunt. De Nat. Deorum Lib. 11, c. 23.
f Origen, De orat. opp. No. 8.

THE EUCHARIST.

7

portion of his spiritual substance. In this ineffable
communication, the divine will penetrates our will,
its action penetrates our action, that it may produce
one and the same indivisible work, which belongs
entirely to one as well as the other : astonishing union
of grandeur and lowliness ; of an ever fruitful, eternal
power, with a created activity whose very duration
is but a process of decay ; of the incorruptible and
regenerating element with the weak and corruptible
elements ofourbeing; which, generally and constantly
cherished, though differently understood, from the
savage tribe to the most intellectual nations, was,
under various forms, the imperishable faith of man-
kind. If certain individuals, with whom the senses
constitute all intelligence, refuse to believe that prayer
is one of the conditions of the life of the soul, what
does that moral idiotism prove against the sentiment
of all ages ? Instead of recognising, on the faith of
general experience, the conditions of the life of the
body, shall we wait till it has been demonstated that
bread is nutritious ?

As every spiritual act ought, according to the laws
of our nature, assume a sensible form, and as this

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external realization completes what is properly called
the human act, that is to say, the act of the entire
man, we find among all nations the same fundamental
rite, namely, the rite of oblation, which is, as it
were, the body of prayer. By prayer, man adores
God as the principle of all existence, the author and
preserver of all beings, from whom every living soul
receives grace to renew and repair its strength. This
great act of adoration was everywhere represented
exteriorly by the oblation of the things necessary for
the life of the body : an oblation by which they also
were referred to God, as to their principle. As
man, by the very act of prayer, recognised that God,
the principle of life, is the absolute master and
supreme Lord of all creatures, so the destruction of
the material elements offered to the Deity, indicated
that every creature holds its existence under the
supreme dominion of the Creator, who can preserve
or withdraw the gift as he pleases. For this reason,
the ordinary matter of the oblation, consisted in those
things which serve as food for man, and particularly
in bread and wine, the daily and universal food, the
expressive symbol of this spiritual nourishment, of

THE EUCHARIST.

9

which the soul has always and everywhere felt the
necessity. Thus oblation was the sensible consum-
mation of prayer ; it may be denominated the prayer
of the senses, as prayer itself is the oblation of the
soul. Mere invocation, separated from it, appeared
imperfect ; and, though they could not in every case
be united, they were deemed not less intimately
connected in their origin.

Prayer, considered in its essence, has a relation to
the order of creation. In invoking the divine aid,
we implore a continuation of the creative action, of
which oblation is the perpetual memorial. These
symbols are destined to awaken the remembrance of
it, as if God, in teaching the first men the worship
which they were to transmit to their posterity, had
said to them " Do this in memory of me, and each
time that you shall offer these emblems of life you
shall announce the living God, who created and
preserves all things." Though human nature had
not been originally vitiated, prayer would have been
the basis of terrestrial worship, because, arising from
the essential connexion which exists between the
creature and the Creator, it is a law for all intelli-

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GEXIBET ON

gences. If God is essentially good and happy, his
creatures cannot be happy but by freely attaching
themselves to him who is the supreme good. Happi-
ness, the reward of virtue, is their common condition.
But to merit they must combat. Virtue which perfects
their being, is the effort by which they conquer the
obstacles opposed to its developement. Hence, the
activity of all finite intelligence being exhausted in the
unceasing struggle against these opposing limits, it
requires continually to repair and renew its strength
at the source of life, in the same manner as the plant
must extract from the bosom of the earth the sap of
each day, in order to triumph over the rigour of the
seasons which impedes the developement of its vege-
tation. Thus prayer, in its essence, is but the sincere
acknowledgment of this continual want, the humble
desire of this perpetual assistance, and the confession
of an indigence that hopes. If the most perfect of
the created spirits, even he who shines at the head of
the celestial hierarchy, believed that he could exist
independently even for a moment, by that alone he
would offer to himself a sacrilegious adoration ; and,
as the elevation to which he aspired had not humility

THE EUCHARIST.

II

for its basis, he would fall instantly precipitated by
pride : whilst the last of those spirits, exiled in the
depths of this valley of tears, as in the catacombs
of creation, if he hath regulated in his heart the
order of his elevation, by ascending from virtue to
virtue,* might soar on the wing of humble prayer
towards the God of gods, and, without ever attaining
his greatness, would approach him unceasingly. This
poor man cried and the Lord heard him, f this is
the language of all creation.

Ever since time came forth from the womb of
eternity, prayer has been commensurate with the
limits of creation, because wherever God has placed
intelligent beings capable of serving him, there are
to be found weakness and hope : supplications and acts
of thanksgiving respond from sphere to sphere, and
the vast universe becomes a great temple. How
delightful the reflection that these forms of prayer

* Beatus vir cujus est auxelium abste ; ascensiones in corde
suo disposuit, in valle lacoymarum, in loco quern posuit
Etenim benedietionem dabit legislator, ibimt de vertute in
virtutem : videbitur Deus deovum in Sion. — Psal. lxxxiii, v. 67.

f Iste pauper clamavit, et Dominus exaudivit cum. — Psal.
xxxiii. v. 7.

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GEREET ON

which are lisped in childhood, and which we ourselves
repeat without comprehending all their sense and
force, are but the translation, into terrestrial language,
of the universal hymn which, from every point of
space and time, swells towards the God of
eternity.

But, if there be a means of salvation analagous to
the condition of all intelligences, does not the condi-
tion of fallen man demand a particular remedy,
corresponding to the corruption of his nature ? Does
not the wreck of his being demand a saving hand ?
Yes, it is the aspiration of bis broken heart. But this
indefinite sentiment, which still leaves him in dark-
ness,tends only to make that want more sensible. Light
is to be sought elsewhere ; what does tradition proclaim
on this point? It tells us that man wants, not only aid
to uphold, but also an expiation to purify him, and
that prayer without sacrifice is insufficient.

The idea that man could not be saved but by the
substitution of a victim, was as general as the idea of
God himself, and apparently more general than the
practice of simple prayer; for certain tribes have been
discovered, in whose worship no trace of vocal prayer

THE EUCHARIST.

13

could be found, but who, in immolating victims
prayed by action.

If we ascend to the most remote antiquity, we shall
find this faith already in possession of the world.
Genesis, which, considered as a mere historical
document, offers to us so simple and so touching
a picture of the primitive faith and manners,
represents it as prevailing even among the children
of Adam, of Noah, of Abraham, and in a word
among all the elder branches of the human family,
or, as the Vedali has it, all the great Predecessors.
It is now generally admitted that the collection of
dogmas and rites, which ancient India presents to the
contemplation of modern science, included, in its
voluminous details, the belief in one great sacrifice ;
and, as the different trains of thought were only
considered as the rays of a circle that had religion for
its centre, this doctrine of expiation appeared to
embody itself, under different forms, in their political
constitution, legislation, philosophy, and even in the
usages of domestic life. It appeared, among certain
primitive nations, at a period prior to all the other
monuments of their religious belief. In examining

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the radical characters of the most ancient writing

extant, we would be tempted to believe that those who

first used them had no worship, if, among the signs

which relate to the physical necessities, one was not

discovered that directly refers to religion, and this

sign was that of sacrifice.* The Persian cosmogony

says that the ancestors of the human race, Meschia

and Meschiane, after being seduced by the

author of evil, immolated a lamb, a portion of

which was received into heaven, f Thus the solemn

sacrifice was always deemed the most august act,

containing, in an eminent degree, the virtue of all

the other parts of worship. An idea not less universal

is accurately represented, though under a different

form, by this ancient Chinese sentence : — " The

recital of all the pieces of Che-King is not equivalent

to a single oblation ; the oblation is much inferior to

the acceptation ; the acceptation is inferior to the

worship offered on the mountains ; and all combined

are infinitely beneath the sacrifice offered to Chang-ty

by the son of Heaven. "t

* Vide the memoirs of Abel Remusat, torn. 11, p. 37.
f Bouen-Dehesch, Tom. 11 of Zend-Avesta, p. 379.
£ Life of Confucius, Tom. xii. Memoirs by the Missionaries
of Pekin, page 209.

THE EUCHARIST.

15

This great idea of expiation, realized in sacrifice,
embodies itself under a form that contrasts as much
with oblation, the expression of simple prayer, as the
state of the human race subject to sin and death
contrasts with the primitive state of innocence and
immortality. A worship sombre as justice itself
succeeded the peaceful worship, which would have
been always that of man, had he remained faithful to
the order established by the first love.* In the
oblation we see the symbols of life : in the sacrifice,
the living being is condemned, and its death is the
figure of another death. The flesh, separated from
the blood, is the awful emblem of the idea concealed
in this mysterious action. What relation could
exist between the immolation of an animal and the
remission of sins — this was a mystery to man. Did
the vile blood of the victims, that fell beneath the
sacred knife, possess the virtue of purifying the
conscience? Never did such an absurdity prevail
in the world. But mankind firmly believed in what
was represented by these sacrifices. All they knew
was that they were the types of a divine mystery of
* Dante.

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GEKBET ON

justice and grace ; and the voice of hope arose, during
four thousand years, from the depths of that mystery
which futurity was to unveil.

The deists, in demonstrating that the efficacy of
prayer and sacrifice cannot be established by mere
reasoning, prove what is attested by tradition, namely,
that this faith has not originated in human conception.
The more clearly they establish that the principle
of these dogmas cannot be found either in the sphere
of experience, or in that of reasoning, the more
evident it becomes that a belief in dogmas as ancient,
and as widely diffused as mankind, could not have
existed, if they had not been primitively revealed ;
so that the insoluble difficulties against the purely
rational theory of these dogmas, have infinite force
in establishing the divine origin of that faith. If
worship, the expression of these general tenets, be
only a vain phantasmagoria, these tenets themselves
must be an eternal chimera, and, in the midst of this
universal dream, I should like to know, how those
who reject belief in sacrifice could prove to a
consistent mind that it ought to believe in God.

TFTG EUCHARIST.

37

CHAPTER II.
Ancient Communion,

The study of antiquity leads from every point
to this truth, that there existed on the earth
but one religion, of which the local forms were
originally but emanations more or less pure.
Besides the striking uniformity of these systems of
belief, certain fundamental rites, extraordinary in
their nature, and yet common to all, render this
unity of origin visible through the space of six
thousand years, and the more so as we can find
nothing in the constitution of the human mind, that
can explain this constant universality. Among
these rites, one of the most remarkable is com-
munion, which was always the consummation of
the offering and sacrifice.

B

lb

GERBET ON

Struck by the similarity of the Jewish rites with
those of other nations, certain philosophers and
theologians deduced, from this as well as from
many other points, consequences diametrically
opposed. The former inferred that the Jews
borrowed their worship from the Gentiles; the
latter, that the Gentile worship was only an imitation
of the ceremonies established by Moses. But it is
absurd to imagine a secondary derivation, when the
very antiquity of these customs, which are found
from the first ages to have been established among
the more ancient nations, supposes a common
derivation, prior to the formation of particular
societies. We gather this even from the book of
Genesis. "It is no longer doubtful among us,
says Pelisson, that all false religions have been
derived from the true one, and that the sacrifices
of paganism have originated in those enjoined on
the first men, of which Abel and Cain afford us an
example ; sacrifices which were but the figure and
the type of a great sacrifice in which God was to
immolate himself for us. The flesh of victims was
eaten throughout the world: in all nations the

THE EUCHARIST.

19

sacrifice which terminated in this way, was regarded
as a solemn feast of man with God ; hence it
occurs that we find very frequently, in the old
pagan poets, the banquet of Jupiter, and the viands
of Neptune, used to signify the victims which were
eaten after they had been immolated in honor of
these false divinities ; and though the J ews had
holocausts, that is sacrifices in which the victim
was entirely consumed in honor of the Deity, they
were accompanied by the offering of a cake, so that
in these sacrifices there might be something of
which man could partake." *

The theology of India has associated this tradi-
tional rite to its vast conceptions. 4 'AH nourish-
ment is deemed to be a sacrifice. The nourish-
ment of the body is emblematic of that of the soul,
viz. the holy truth, — the celestial manna. Wherefore
food was to be taken with devotion, in a state of
sweet recollection, the soul free from terrestrial
cares and absorbed in the delights of an innocent
joy. Thus religion gave laws even to festivals.
We communicate with the divinity through the
* Treatise on the Eucharist, page 182 — Paris 1694,

GEUBET on

medium of the oblation presented to it. It is only
on consecrated food that the Hindoo lives. He has
a horror of all animal food, that has not been
offered to the Divinity. Such are, in substance,
the fundamental principles of the doctrine regarding
sacrifices in India." * To cite but an example,
one of the most celebrated sacrifices, which con-
sisted in the immolation of a lamb, was accompanied
by a prayer, in which these words were repeated
aloud : TFhen shall the Saviour be born ? This
symbolical ceremony terminated by partaking of the
flesh of the victim, and so sacred was the character
of this participation, that the law which bound the
Bramins to perpetual abstinence, yielded to that
superior law which prescribed communion, f We
find a similar custom among the Egyptians, who
eat, in their principal sacrifices, the flesh of animals
which on other occasions they held in abhorrence.
Herodotus, who remarks this apparent contradiction,
says that he had learned the reason of it ; but, in

* The Catholic by Baron D'Eckstein.
f Letters of the Abb£. P. Bouchet to Huet, Tom. xi of
edifying, Letters p. 21.

THE EUCHARIST.

21

order that he might not profane the secrets which
had been confided to him, he veils it in a religious
silence. *

In the ancient mysteries of Mithras, which finally
prevailed through a considerable portion of the
Roman Empire, St. Justin f and Tertullianf
inform us, that bread and a vessel full of water,
over which a mysterious form of prayer was recited,
were placed before the initiated ; and this species
of consecration was also followed by communion. §
We learn from the Zends books, that a similar
ceremony was deemed an essential part of the
Persian worship. The offerings of bread, meat,
and fruit, in which the priest and people par-
ticipated at the end of the sacred ceremony, were
designated by the name of Miezd. It would be
difficult to imagine any thing more solemn than
the prayers and benedictions which preceded and
followed this- rite.^f The holy spirits supposed to
preside over the different parts of the universe and
the conduct of men, as well as the souls of the just,

* Hist of Herodotus, Lib. 11. f Apology.

% Prescriptions, c. 40. § Vide note 11. IF Vide note 11L.

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from the Father of the human race down to
Sosioch, a name which the Zends books give to
the expected Redeemer, were all invoked for that
oblation. And, as the reversibility of merit was
universally believed, a special prayer is contained
in the same books, by which the priest, according
to his private intention, applied the benefit of that
holy action to other men. Purity was deemed a
necessary disposition for participating in the obla-
tion. The liturgy proclaimed : " The pure ordain
the oblation, the pure ministers have performed it,
and the pure partake of it." Then the Celebrant
said to his attendant : "Man of the law, eat this
Miezd, and perform this action with purity." The
Zends books extol its efficacy in pompous terms.
Ormusd, who from the beginning dwelleth in
increated light, had instituted and celebrated the
Miezd with the celestial spirits in his splendid man-
sion. To this ceremony the religion of the Persians
adds another, emblematic of the same idea, and to
which it attaches the same importance. The great
Ormusd, in the beginning, created the tree of life.
That symbolical tree, called Horn, grows in

THE EUCHARIST.

23

waters of a pure and vivifying source which flows
from the throne of Oramsd himself. It banishes
death, it will effect the resurrection, and impart
life to the blessed. They consecrate it by a form
of prayer similar to that of the Miezd ; and eleva-
ting they invoke it, because it exalts piety and
science. After having extracted the juice, which
is received in a sacred cup, they drink it, for
it is said, that whosoever shall drink this juice
shall not die. Thus the two principal ceremonies
of worship, so closely united, are also linked with
the mystical idea of a communion which consists
in being nourished by sacred bread, and in
drinkmg what the Zend Avesta terms the liquor
of life.*

Among the Chinese the same rite presents itself
in the sacrifices of an inferior order offered to the
souls of the just, as may be seen in that which is
celebrated in honor of Confucius. The priest after
having buried in the earth the blood of the victim,
offers to Confucius a vessel full of wine which he

* Zend-Avesta, Vendidad Sad6, Tom. 1, part II, passim..

24

GERBET ON

immediately pours on a man of straw, and addresses
this prayer to the tablet: "Your virtues, O
Confucius, are excellent and admirable. Your
doctrine teaches Kings how to rule. The offerings
which we present to you are pure. May your
spirit descend on us ; may it enlighten us by its
presence." After the prayer, all the assistants
kneel, and remain in that posture for some time.
The priest himself, after having washed his hands,
also kneels : then the voices and musical instruments
steal upon the ear. He takes from the hands of
one of the assistants a basin in which there is a
piece of silk, elevating with both hands he offers it
to Confucius. He performs a like ceremony with
a vessel full of wine. Whilst they burn the piece
of silk on a pan set apart for that use, the Cele-
brant recites a prayer similar to the preceding.
After many reverences, he takes again in his hands
the vessel full of wine, and recites another prayer
addressed to the spirit of Confucius. Then he
says : Drink the wine of happiness and joy. He
commands them to kneel. Whilst he says, Drink
the wine of joy, the Celebrant drinks the wine

THE EUCHARIST.

25

that is in the vessel presented to him. He offers
to Confucius the flesh of the victims, which are
afterwards distributed among the assistants. Each
was persuaded that, by such a participation, he
became entitled to the favour of Confucius."*

The worship of the Greeks and Romans is too
well known to require that we should enter into
any details on this subject. It is generally admitted
that besides the custom of feeding on the flesh of
the victims, the former used, in their sacrifices,
cakes made of fine flour and honey ; the latter, a
paste made of fine flour and salt, which they called
immolatio, to this were added libations of wine,
which were not poured on the head of the victims
till the celebrant and assistants had received a
portion of them.

In the solemn sacrifice which the Celts offered
at the beginning of every year, the three most
ancient Druids carried, one bread, the other a
vessel full of water, and the third an ivory hand
representing justice. After some prayers, the

* Parallel of Religions. Tom. 1, page 420.

26

GEHBET ON

high-priest burned a little of the bread, poured on
the altar some drops of wine, offered the bread and
wine in sacrifice, and then distributed them to the
assistants.*

The Germans, f Scandinavians, J and Finns, §
conformed to the universal rite; and it appears
that the practice of pagan communion was preser-
ved, down to the end of the sixteenth century, in
Sama-gotia, as well as in several parts of Lithuania.
Ismaelismhas preserved a sacrifice commemorative of
that of Abraham, which it celebrates with great mag-
nificence : and in this festival, the most solemn of all,
the mysterious ceremony, on which the consum-
mation of the sacrifice depends, is also observed,
though one of its circumstances is contrary to the
prohibitions of the Koran. ^]

As to the Americans, we shall only cite the
example of the two great nations, Mexico and Peru,
which may be termed the east of the new world. 1 4 The

* Parallel of Religious, Tom. i, Part II, Page 80.
f Vide note iv. J Suhn, odin Tom iii, P. 181.

§ Vide research on the ancient Finns.
H Vide note v.

THE EUCHARIST.

'27

article of communion has been most clearly recorded
by all their writers. It was practiced in Mexico
especially ; where the priests made a statue from
the dough of Indian corn which was afterwards
baked. This was the representative of their idol.
On a certain day of the year it was exposed, with
much ceremony, to the veneration of the faithful,
and no one dared to absent himself from the temple.
It was carried about in procession, and when it was
borne back to the temple, the Papa broke, and
the priest distributed it to the people, who
eat of ity and believed themselves sanctified by
such a participation. We see the same rite
diffused among many of the ancient nations of our
hemisphere.

But we cannot omit alluding to another rite of
the Peruvian priests. They offered in sacrifice bread
made of Indian corn together with a vinous liquor
extracted from it. They commenced bv eating this
bread, then, dipping one of then* fingers in the
liquor, and raising then- eyes to heaven, they made
an aspersion in the air, with the liquid they had
on their finger : and having done this they drank

28

GERBET ON

in honor of the Sun. It is not improbable that this
bread and this vinous substance, were made of the
Indian corn which grew in the gardens of the temples,
and which was esteemed sacred. However tins
may be, it is certain that this bread and wine were
made by the consecrated virgins. The bread was
called Cancu, and the liquor Aca, and were never
used save in the great festivals of Eayami and
Cittua*

This fundamental rite completes the unity of
primitive worship, the scheme of which then
becomes.fully developed. According to the univer-
sal belief, God, who, in the beginning, was
personally present to man, continued to be so only
by grace to fallen man. But how was a par-
ticipation in divine grace to be effected ? By prayer
accompanied with oblation, and hi virtue of an
expiation prefigured by sacrifice. But even this
imion had an exterior form which consisted in the
participation of the food consecrated by oblation,
and the flesh of victims. Thus a communion in

* American Letters of Carle, Tom. 1, Pages 154 and 155.

THE EUCHARIST. 29

grace, at the same time spiritual and corporal,
invisible in its essence, and visibly manifested, such
was the centre to which the leading tenets of all
nations tended, such the point of reunion — the vital
principle of universal worship.*

It would be impossible to understand this primi-
tive worship, without viewing each part in relation
to the whole. This order of mystical ideas typified
by corporal communion, was connected with a deep
religious symbolism, according to which all the
elements of the material were only the representatives
of the invisible world. An immense colossal spiri-
tualism rises before us ; even in the first ages of
the world. Originating in the dogmas of tradition
it shewed itself in all the ancient systems of the
human race. At the epoch subsequent to the
deluge, we see for example, in India, the ruins of
a primitive science perfectly spiritual in its essence.
These indeed are only ruins ; but yet they are nobler
than our creations. Dimly seen through the vista
of former ages, these intellectual pyramids would

* Vide Note VI.

30

GERBET ON

appear by their enormous proportions to oversha-
dow the systems of modern invention. Spirituality
was then the primitive state : it bore the venerable
character of age when materialism received its birth.
If man had been but the creature of mere sensation,
it would have been impossible, judging by all the
known laws of the human mind, that, in the interval
which separates the period of which we now speak,
from that which the traditions of all nations point
out as the birth of our species, he could have raised
himself, from a state scarcely superior to that of
apes, to a spiritualism which embraced the universe,
and disposed in harmonious and corresponding
Cycles the various orders of ideas. With these
facts before us, do you suppose that man, abandoned
to himself, a wandering savage, commenced his
career by spirituality ? Such an hypothesis is an
evident absurdity. Look at the savages, who are
already hi a more favourable position from being
born in a sort of society, and receiving there, some
degree of education: though initiated, by the
language they are taught, in some general spiritual
ideas, they remain, in every other respect, the slaves

THE EUCHARIST.

31

of the grossest materialism. The animal stupidity
from which they cannot free themselves by their
own energy, furnishes an irrefragable argument
against this fanciful philosophy, not less contrary,
in other respects, to the necessary progress of the
human mind. For, as Hume remarks, it would be
absurd that, in the intellectual order, man should
have invented palaces before cottages. Two things
are then certain: man commenced by spiritualism,
and man, excluded from all communication with
other intelligences, would have commenced by
materialism. Hence arises the necessity of a pri-
mitive revelation, which indeed would be the most
philosophical conception, even though it had not
been the universal belief. * The more deeply we
shall examine the character of the ancient world,
viewing it in relation with the established laws of
the human mind, the more this great truth will
become evident. The truly catholic philosophy,
to which at the present day all the labours of the
learned are contributing, sometimes unconsciously,
will in developing itself, scatter to the winds, the
* Vide note vii

32

GERBET ON

sterile dust of abstractions, and exhibit the ancient
faith crowned with all the rays of science. Already
the science even of the infidel school, astonished
at its own discoveries, which overthrow at the
same time the fanciful theories of idiology and
materialism, has begun to suspect that tliere are
more things between heaven and earth than its
philosophy has dreamed of. *

* Shakspea,re,

THE EUCHARIST.

33

chapter nr.

Developement of the Primitive Religion— personal
presence of the Deity — C7iristian Communion.

Though the primitive religion recognised, as we
have seen, a certain intercourse between God and
man, yet the human race aspired to a more perfect
union. The recollection of an original soci'ety still
more perfect had been preserved, and the same
tradition had perpetuated the hope, that a more
endearing union would be established by the Saviour
universally expected. Thus the belief of a Godj
present only by grace, could never satisfy the yearning
desire of man for a closer union with his Creator.
It was partly to the energy of this desire that idolatry
owed its existence ; for every vicious practice is but
the perversion of a sentiment originally good, as
c

3-1

GERBET ON

error, according to the remark of Bossuet, is but the
abuse of truth. Hence the consecration of statues
that the Divinity might reside corporally therein ;
hence the strong propensity to theurgy, so violent in
all the pagan nations, hence also the disposition to
recognise in illustrious personages some incarnate
divinity. This divine instinct shewed itself, in every
part of the universe, under various forms, and the
public worship, even in the superstious practices
amalgamated with it, was to a certain degree the
prophetic yearning of mankind, seeking every where
a personal presence of the divinity.

J esus Christ appears, the aspirations of the moral
world are at length satisfied, its expectations realized.
This faith in the real presence was immediately
productive of two remarkable effects, bearing on the
point before us, the one in the bosom of Christianity
itself, the other in the pagan world. Among the
christians, the universal rage for divination, sorcery,
and magical rites, ceased on a sudden. It was not
only the external practices that gave way before the
rigorous laws of the Church, but even the propensity,
till then so furious and indomitable, was stilled in

THE EUCHARIST.

35

the human heart, and was succeeded by a profound
calm, indicating that a great want had been satisfied.
Beyond the pale of the Church, the same belief reacted
on pagan philosophy. The latter perceiving that
Christianity, in announcing the personal presence of
the Deity, had satisfied the perpetual desire of man-
kind, recognised the necessity, in order to maintain
some sway over the mind, of promising a similar boon.
But as by the most elaborate abstractions, it could
have produced nothing better than an abstract Deity,
and as in truth it had produced nothing real but
incertitude and doubt, it now assumed a perfectly
new character. From rational which it had been,
it became mystical and theurgical ; and the famous
school of Alexandria, at that time the nursery of
pagan philosophy, could only oppose to the mysteries
of the Gospel a sort of theological alchymy, which
vanished, like a vision of the night, before the
ascendancy of the ancient faith fully displayed in
the glories of Christianity.

The superiority of the Christian religion properly
so called over the primitive religion, consists princi-
pally in uniting us more closely with the Deity. God

36

GEKBEf ON

could not communicate with man without imparting
a more intimate knowledge of himself ; hence the
developement of truth. He could not impart this
intimate knowledge of himself without being loved
more perfectly ; hence again the developement of the
law of love, and of all morality, fully comprehended
in the precept of charity. It followed then as a
necessary consequence, that religious worship should
receive the degree of perfection suited to it. If the
most august act of the Christian worship was only a
memorial of the Saviour's death, as the most solemn
sacrifice of the ancient worship was its emblem, if
the one announced but the mere remembrance, as the
other expressed but the hope, the two would consti-
tute but mere figures, the one of the past, the other of
the future, but both equally void; so that Religion
having been developed in all its other parts, and that
developement being a consequence of the real pre-
sence of the Deity, had religious worship alone
remained in its primitive state of imperfection,
it would have stopped short of the reality. The
momentous event, which constitutes the difference
of the two Epochs, is necessarily the arch-stone of a

THE EUCHARIST.

37

new order, all the parts of which should be propor-
tionally superior, as they relate to the corresponding
parts of the preceding order, which was only the
model ; and whereas the incarnation is the substan-
tial union of the divine and human nature, however
mysterious to our feeble intelligence as yet in its
infancy, it was natural that the worship, determined
by that fundamental fact, should be the medium of
a union with God, less perfect than it wiil be when
the shades of faith shall have given place to the
unclouded vision of truth itself, but as close as it can
be in this enigmatical world, where man is less
susceptible of light than of love.

Such has been at all times the belief of the univer-
sal Church, a belief founded on the words of Christ
himself — that he was and would be always present
to the regenerated world even to the consummation
of time, though in an invisible manner — and that
such a permanent presence constituted the vital
principle of Christianity. It does not enter into our
present plan to demonstrate the perpetuity of Catholic
tradition ; this is indeed the less necessary as it is no
longer contested by all consistent protestants, who

38

GERBET ON

have been forced, by the principle of mental indepen-
dence, to represent to themselves that variation and
change of belief is one of the essential characteristics
of the true religion, and to reject catholicity merely
because its fundamental principle is to believe what
has been always and every where believed. But, if
the rule of faith, the great preservative of dogmas, is
immutably one, the dogmas considered in themselves
present the same grand character of unity, particularly
in every part that relates to the divine presence.

Mankind believed that God was present by grace :
but what is grace ? It is an aid given man enabling
him to regain the state in which he was created,
renovating, because it relates to fallen man, and
consequently purely gratuitous. It is in another point
of view, a continuation of the creative action. Since
the incarnation of the Word, the Church has believed
in the real presence of Christ ; but what is the real
presence, but the incarnation perpetuated? The
dogma of the Eucharist is as naturally and inti-
mately connected with the order of ideas which
is based on the Incarnation, as is the dogma of grace
with the more general order of ideas, though funda-

THE EUCHARIST.

m

mentally the same, which has for its basis the restora-
tion of rational beings according to the primitive
plan of the creation. It is uniformly a belief in the
actual presence of the Deity, but under two different
modes, having the same mutual relation as the two
fundamental facts by which they are determined ; for
the real presence is to the mere divine action, or
grace, precisely what the Incarnation is to the will of
assisting fallen man. The generative term of the
union of God with man having changed, the fruits
are different ; but, in both cases, the proportion is
preserved. Thus all the mysteries of love are inter-
woven with each other, or rather they are the
progressive accomplishment of the same merciful
design, of which the eucharistic union is the last
terrestrial compliment : how beautiful the harmony
which presents, under so magnificent an aspect, to
the reason of man, this mystery which is also the
tenet of his heart, being the purest and sweetest
of his consolations.

The error of those who reject the real presence is,
in relation to Christianity fully developed, what the
system of the ancient Philosophers, who denied the

40

GERBET ON

dogma of grace, was to primitive Christianity : an
error which the Pelagians sought to combine with
christian ideas. By creation, said the former,
we receive from God all that constitutes man, what
necessity for a new divine action ? By the union of
the Word with human nature, said the latter, we
received all that constitutes the christian, what
necessity for a new union with God ? The first did
not understand that man stood in need of a commu-
nion in divine grace to maintain the life of the soul,
or to practice the primeval law. The
second are still ignorant that a communion in the
divine substance of the incarnate Word, is necessary
to possess the plenitude of life, and to attain the
high perfection of the evangelical Law, which is the
end and consummation of the former. But when
they suppose that, in recognising the necessity whe-
ther of grace, or of the eucharistic communion,
injury is done the Creator or Redeemer, they forget
that the Eucharistic] communion is the means by
which the permament incarnation is individualized
in every christian, as grace is the means by which
the divine permanent power operates in a particular

THE EUCHARIST.

41

manner in every man, and thus, so far from detrac-
ting from the creative power, or from the renovating
influence of the incarnation, nothing is better fitted
to give a more 'exalted notion of them, than this
continual want of participating in them, as nothing is
more capable to inspire us with a lively sentiment of
the infinite love they reveal, than this inexhaustible
communication of both one and the other. Hence
the beautiful expression of Bourdaloue, rigourously
true with respect to grace, but supereminently so
with respect to the Eucharist, or grace by excel-
lence : God exalts himself by this infinite con-
descension.

The analogies which have been just noticed show
how Protestantism, in setting out with a denial of
the catholic dogma of the Eucharist, has proceeded
step by step, to reject the dogma of grace, the foun-
dation of all religion; and this progress of Protestan-
tism confirms in turn the accuracy of these analogies*
For the history of doctrines is by no means a vain phe-
nomenon. Their external connexion shadows forth
the internal association of ideas, and gives a palpable
form to their logic. The three leaders of the reform-

42

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ation marshaled against catholic mysticism, assail each
from his ground, the belief in the sacrament of love.
Luther mutilates and denaturalizes it; Calvin, by
veiling under equivocal expressions the substance of
his doctrine, annihilates it. Less cunning, but
more enterprising, Zuinglius lifts the veil. The first
effect of their common doctrine was that the Refor-
mation exhibited a worship divested of sacrifice, and
was thus placed without the pale of Religion, such as
it has been conceived in all ages. Shortly, by a
natural consequence, Socianinism, following up the
work of destruction, assailed the dogma of the real
presence, in the incarnation itself, as well as the
fundamental idea of sacrifice by attacking the
redemption. Though ancient Protestantism had
struggled some time against the ascendancy of
socinian doctrines, the latter however have prevailed.
Save in the old liturgies, they are to be met with in
all the writings of the reformers. Faith in prayer
and grace, the last link that binds man to God, still
survived amid the wreck of these crumbling doc-
trines. But the rationalists of Germany * betray a

* Among others, Eberhard, Tuukeim, Spalding,
Veigscheider, &c.

/

THE EUCHARIST.

43

marked tendency to hold up this belief as a ridiculous
superstition, irreconcilable with the laws of nature.
Thus, as the reformation advances, the living
worship retires, a desert expands around it, and, in
this moral waste where all the sources of love are
dried up, prayer, even prayer, which springs up
wherever a particle of faith remains, withers and dies
beneath the blighting influence of Rationalism.

One of the most celebrated doctors of ancient
Protestantism demanded what connexion could exist
between faith in the real presence and faith in prayer.
He took credit to himself that he could not under-
stand it, and indeed what is it these men have
understood ? The history of their own doctrine fully
developed confounds their presumptuous ignorance.
It shows that the germ of Catholic mysticism exists
in faith in prayer. In truth, whoever admits that a
simple act of the human will effects a change in the
spiritual or material order of the universe, and that
God obeys the voice of man, he makes a most
profoudly mystical act of faith, as it bears a relation
to an order of things entirely beyond the sphere of his
* Larrogue — Hist, of the Euch, p. 41.

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reasoning and sensation; and hence he is inconsistent,
if, retaining a belief on this point, he refuses it on any
other, under the pretext that it transcends the sphere
of his senses or the conception of his reason. Here
then we have one of the causes that will make
Protestantism disappear as a religion, at a period
which cannot be very remote. Its destiny impels it,
with an irresistible force, to resolve itself into pure
rationalism, for, if the reason of each individual is
absolute, it ought admit nothing but what it clearly
conceives. Rationalism, in turn, will abolish faith
in prayer, because it is essentially indemonstrable.
Now, prayer once destroyed, form if you can the
notion of a religion ?

Catholicism, on the contrary, maintains its belief
in the real presence and communion in the substance
of the Word made flesh, by an act of faith essentially
similar to that by which the presence of God through
his action, and communion in grace by means of
prayer have been at all times believed. Catholicism
also maintains, in virtue of the same principle, the
faith of all ages in divine communications, rendered
more perfectby the effects of the incarnation. To reject

THE EUCHARIST.

4-5

the Catholic doctrine, either we must discard the
faith of antiquity, by denying that God was present
to man in a particular manner, conformable to his
nature, that is to say, in a human manner, or we
must suppose that this union of God with man,
which has ever been the foundation of religion, was
not designed to be perfected ; in other words, that
the ancient worship was not designed to give place
to a more excellent one ; which inference would be
directly opposed to the primitive traditions, that were
the very vehicles of this faith in a future developement.

Christianity, in another and not less fundamental
point, has realized the general expectation. The
ancient worship prophetically shadowed forth, as we
have seen, that a great atonement was at hand, and
though the notion of it was somewhat confused, yet
its essential traits naturally showed themselves
in the general belief. Its symbolical rites however
various were mutually connected only by the myste-
rious relation they bore to it, as the different shades
cast by a body form but one and the same shadow.
The regenerating sacrifice. from which all other sacri-
fices derive their value, ought to bear that impress of

46 GERBET ON

unity which characterizes God himself, to whom
ever)' creature is indebted for existence. What does
Christianity proclaim on this point ? " For there is
one God, and one mediator of God and man, * the
man Christ Jesus. For by one oblation he hath
perfected for ever them that are sanctified."! Again
this expiation ought to be universal, for, according
to the faith of the human race, God opens not to one
only but to all nations the bosom of his mercy. What
is the doctrine of Christianity on this subject ? " Christ
died for all,'! for there is no respect of persons with
God."§ But if the all powerful efficacy of this
sacrifice was to pervade every place, it was but a
natural consequence that the hope of pardon emana-
ting from it should be limited only by the consumma-
tion of time. God never commanded man to despair,
and the abandoned are no longer of this world. Never,

* Unus enimDeus, unus et mediator Dei et hominum, homo
Christus Jesus. Epist. ad Timott., cap. ii, c. 5.

f Una enim oblatione consummavit in sempiternum sanctifi-
catos. Epist. ad Hebr. cap. x. v. 14.

% Pro omnibus mortuus est Christus, 2d Epist. ad Corinth,
cap. v., v. 15.

§ Non est enim acceptio personarum apud Deum, Ad Rom»
cap. 11, 2.

THE EUCHARIST.

47

at any period of time, not even when the gulph of

iniquity opened widest and deepest, was it believed

that divine mercy had stopped in its course, like to

a river which loses itself in an abyss ; and as this

sacrifice the presentiment of which was so universal,

proved for mankind the inexhaustible source of grace,

so it was meet that this expiation should be the means

of salvation both for those who had expected by faith

its exterior realization, as well as for those who were

destined to know its accomplishment. Such was the

necessary consequence of the primitive symbol,

Christianity proclaimed it. " All these died according

to faith, not having received the promises, but

beholding them afar off, and saluting them, and

confessing that they were strangers and pilgrims on

the earth.* Finally, the sacrifice being destined to

satisfy infinite justice, and the merits of all creatures

bearing no proportion to that infinite satisfaction, it

was necessary that the victim should be both divine

and human ; human to suffer, divine to satisfy. Thus

* Juxta fidem defuncti sunt omnes isti, non acceptis repro-
messionibus sed a longe eas aspicientes, et salutantes et
confitentes quia peregriai ethospites sunt super tenum. Ad Heb.
cap. 11, v. 13.

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the belief in a man-God, of which very many striking
traces are found in antiquity, was comprehended,
though imperfectly, in the general desire of an
efficacious expiation. * This mystery, hidden in the
bosom of all ages, was unveiled by Christianity.
" For in him were all things created in heaven and
on earth,f and upholding all things by the word of his
power." J Wherefore when he comethinto the world,
he saith, sacrifice and oblation thou wouldest not ;
but a body thou hast fitted to me ; holocausts for sin
did not please thee ; then said I, behold I come ;
making peace through the blood of his cross, both
as to the things on earth and the things in heaven. §
When Christianity proclaimed the consummation
of the one, universal, perpetual, eminently holy and
divine Sacrifice, not an accent of surprise was heard
throughout the world; as if mankind recognized in this

* Vide note 8.

t Omnia per ipsum et en ipso creata sunt.-— Ad. Coloss,,
cap. 1., v. 16.

J Portansque omnia verbo virtutis suse. — Ad. Heb., cap. 1,
v. 3.

§ Ingrediens mundum, dixit, hostiam et oblationem noluisti,
corpus autem aptasti mibi : holocautomata pro peccato non tibi
placuesuxit : tune dixi : Ecce venio. — ad Heb. ii, 5.

THE EUCHARIST.

49

dogma its recollections and its hopes. In the same
way as the idea of God, or a necessary being, accounts
for the existence of all other beings, so does the
notion of the Christian sacrifice account for all the
ancient ones. It explains to us how man hoped he
might be saved by the substitution of a victim ; why
the world believed, previously to its having been
proclaimed by St. Paul, that without the effusion of
blood there was no remission of sin ; why the animals
mystically devoted should be pure ; why by an error
fatal indeed, but bearing the impress of the truth
which it abused, human sacrifice could appear
necessary ; why all these expiations were deemed
insufficient ; finally why mankind, doomed to die,
sought even in the bosom of death salvation and life.
The cross of the Saviour has solved all these
astonishing problems ; it explains the faith of man-
kind, as the existence of God explains the world.

Catholicism, in accordance with the tradition of
all ages, admits that sacrifice is the supreme act of
adoration, but that religious worship having ceased
to be merely emblematical, since Christ substituted
reality for figure, this rite, ever existing, has become

D

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and shall continue to the end the very form of the
eternal sacrifice. And as all the rays of universal
worship are seen to converge in sacrifice, so in the
Christian sacrifice, the different parts of worship
substantially reunited, are all raised to the highest
degree of perfection. The primitive worship of
mankind was based on prayer. It still continues to
be the basis of Christian worship ; but when the
priest, who is a mortal and a sinner, presents to God
the petitions of his brethren assembled around the
altar, it is not man who prays, it is the invisible and
eternal Pontiff " always living to make intercession
for us ; holy, innocent, undefiled, separate from
sinners, and made higher than the heavens."* Who,
uniting our supplications to his, as he united our
nature to his, gives a divine efficacy to the humble
supplications of our misery. Oblation also constituted
a part of the universal and ancient worship ; it still
exists under the same form, and in bread and wine
are offered up the first fruits of the viands on which
we subsist. But in the far more spiritual worship of
Christianity there only remains a mystical veil of
* Ad. Heb. chap, vii., v. 26.

THE EUCHARIST.

51

these material elements suited to our present condi-
tion, through which the divine Word imparts himself
to us, the eternal bread which nourishes our souls
languishing for the ever living truth, the celestial
drink which begins to slake within us the infinite
thirst of love. The immolation of typical victims
was the most solemn act of primitive worship ;
immolation yet remains ; but, the reign of figures
having ceased on Calvary, Christ himself is the
victim. The theandric flesh and blood are present
under separate signs, in memory of his death, and
at the same time under the form of bread and wine,
the emblems of life, because life was restored to us
by his death. The elements of oblation and those of
the bloody sacrifice, of which the former were the
memorial of creation, the latter the image of redemp-
tion, and which were always separate in the primitive
worship, are united and identified in the Christian
sacrifice, because redemption is creation repaired.
Finally the different parts of the ancient worship
tended to a communion in the grace of God, repre-
sented by the participation of the food consecrated
by oblation, and in the flesh of victims. The

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consummation of the Christian worship is an act of
the same nature, but of a superior order constituted
by the incarnation which has ennobled all religion.
Christian communion is not a mere participation in
grace, but in the very substance of the man-God,
becoming incarnate in each of us, in order to purify
and nourish our souls. It is the union with God
raised, if it may be so said, to the highest degree that
can be attained within the limits of the present order;
beyond this is heaven. For if in the union of the
divine substance with ours, God proportionably
changed our intelligence into his, and our will into
his love, " We would see him face to face," we
would love him with a love proportioned to that
unclouded vision : heaven is nothing else than that.
Let us wait a little, the transfiguration is fast approach-
ing. This terrestrial life is but the infancy of man.
As the child inhales the streams of life, and by natural
instinct cleaves the maternal bosom, before it has
opened its eyes to the light of day, thus man is
nourished at the bosom of God before he can behold
him face to face. Such is the universal order of
Providence ; for the union of intelligence and will

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53

is invariably preceded by a substantial union. But
shortly the child knows the authors of his being as
he is known by them, and becomes identified with
them in affection. Thus when we shall have passed
from this world as from a cradle, the union,
commenced on the earth shall be consummated in
heaven, and God, penetrating all our being, by his
power, his light, and his love, shall be in us and we
in him, according to the plenitude of his attributes
and the capabilities of our nature.

The eucharistic communion is something interme-
diate between the union with the Deity granted to the
just of old in this land of banishment, and that which
the saints enjoy in the celestial City. More highly
favoured than the former, we participate not only in
grace, but in the substance of the incarnate Word,
as the saints in heaven. But less happy than the
latter, as yet we only see God through a veil, or
enigmatically according to St. Paul. In this respect
we are in the state of the ancient just, which is the
condition of all men, during their sojourn in this
world of shades and images, which is only relieved
by a darkling day according to the remark of the

GEKBET ON

ancients. A union with the Divinity has ever been
the principle of love ; but it has been developed in
different degrees. Without losing the character of
luiiformity, it has more profoundly penetrated human
nature, since the incarnation which has established
between God and man more intimate communica-
tions ; as in the same way, without injury to this
uniformity it will receive a boundless expansion,
when the bonds which fetter it here below shall have
fallen at the portals of the heavenly country. Thus
the divine work is progressing to its accomplishment:
all the developements which religion receive here
below are but the transition from the temporal to the
eternal order.

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55

CHAPTER IV.

The idea of the Eucharist according to Catholic
Doctrine.

Catholicism is the universal belief, not in an abstract,
but in a real and effective presence of God with
man. God is really present to our intelligence by
his word, of which general tradition is but the
prolonged echo through the vast space of ages. He is
really present to our will by grace, of which external
worship is the permanent organ. Hence, through
the medium of man's free concurrence, arises a union
with God, who is the ultimate object of his existence,
as well as that of all beings. Going forth from God
to people the universe, he recalls them into the
infinite bosom of his eternity, to be all in all: such,
according to the belief of antiquity, were the last
words of creation,

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The spirits that departed from the pale of primi-
tive Catholicism followed two different directions.
The one setting out with the idea of God, and,
endeavouring to discover the secret of creation,
conceived a union of each individual being with God,
similar to that which exists between modification
and the substance modified ; thus making man one
of the imiunierable forms of the Divinity, The other
restricting themselves to man, sought to find in him
the reason of all ; but as a contingent and limited
being does not contain within itself the reason of
any thing, not even of its own existence, these entirely
lost sight of the truth, and scepticism was the result
of their feeble researches. Such are the two extreme
points to which the rationalism of antiquity, whether
in India or Greece, conducted. With the sceptic, man
was but the shadow of a being, with the pantheist,
be was the supreme being. From these two doctrines
emanated two corresponding orders of sentiments.
Scepticism, which, in annihilating intelligence,
suffers only an animal activity to exist, plunged man
into a sensual life, whilst ideal pantheism absorbed
even the senses themselves in the delirium of perpe-
tual ecstacy.

THE EUCHARIST.

57

Equally remote from these absurdities, primitive
Catholicism sustained during four thousand years the
reason and the heart of man, by faith in a union with
God, which, without degrading, admonished him of
his weakness, and, without inspiring an equality, fixed
him in the place which eternal order had assigned
him. Bereft of that guiding faith, this anxious and
feeble creature, hurried along on the waves of time,
would have inevitably perished on one or other of
these rocks — pride or despair. It is particularly since
the preaching of the Gospel that the salutary influence
of this leading dogma of Catholicism, the genuine
polar star of mankind, has been more clearly seen
and deeply felt.

Christ is the truth personally residing among men.
Cotemporary with Christ, the Church which received
from his lips the eternal word, but clothed in human
language, unceasingly communicates, under the same
relative and limited form, the infinite Word to mortal
intelligences, until passing from this region they
become united to him in a more perfect world. How
could this tradition of the Word have been even for a
single instant suspended ? Could the Church in some

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day-dream have imagined that word to be eternal
which Was but of yesterday, or could she ever have
said : I will announce what I have not learned ? Is
it not notorious that she has always inexorably cast
from her bosom every innovator who, substituting for
common tradition his own ideas, sought, instead of
transmitting truth to create it? In hearing theChurch,
the faithful then hears Christ himself, who speaks
to them as really as he did to his disciples seated
around him on the Mount of Beatitudes. For the
essence of the word is not the material sound that
is borne on the wind, but that internal sound which
vibrates in the heart, that expression always the
same, which, though repeated by a thousand
voices, invariably awakens the same thought, as
an image reflected by an hundred mirrors is
always the same image. Catholic tradition, ever
preserving inviolable the primitive sense of
Scripture, is not a word which stands alone, or
independently of the word of Christ ; no it is the
permanent vibration of his word through every
point of space and time.
But Christ is not merely the creative light of all

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59

intelligences ; he has other relations with the posterity
of Adam, a degenerate and dying tribe of this great
and immortal society of spirits. " The word was
made flesh" to heal by this regenerating union the
carnal fever of the soul, the innate source of all
our woes, and to wash in his blood the wounds of
humanity. Thus the Church, in receiving from
Christ the word which enlightens, received also from
him the divine remedy, which she distributes to her
children as she imparts to them the light of his word.
The Word made flesh resides in the midst of them,
always full of truth and grace. As formerly the
crowd of infirm pressed on his steps to be healed
by the virtue that emanated from him, so do the
faithful at present labouring under the same malady
hidden within them, approach with an humble faith
to a participation of this divine remedy.

What strikes the senses is the particular form under
which the celestial element is veiled to communicate
itself to the faithful, as the sounds which strike the
ear attentive to the voice of the Church are only the
sensible form, under which the divine Word pene-
trates each intelligence. What is truly substantial

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in these two communions, is Christ enlightening by
his word, and healing by his efficacious presence ;
the only immutable reality amid this perpetual change
of forms by which he comes within the changing
condition of our being, in order to raise us to the
participation of his incorruptible being.

Such is the vital principle of Catholicism. Here
is the source of that power which it exercises on man,
and which is universally recognised by its enemies.
It sways him with all the force of the human presence
of the Divinity. Separated from a faith in love, this
belief would crush the soul. When contemplating
the abyss of the heavens, a vague impression of
immensity suddenly strikes the soul, and we fancy
that there passes before our eyes the shadow of the
Infinite Being, our imagination is stilled with stupor,
and even our reason shudders. What would be our
sensation were we to find ourselves immediately in
connexion with the Eternal, the immense, the great
Unknown, ignorant whether it be love or hatred that
lies buried in the mysterious depths of infinity ?
Thus, as tradition was weakened, faith in grace was
also enervated, as may be perceived among many of

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61

the Pagan nations. An overwhelming fear of the
Deity was manifested by rites, the very recollection
of which carries terror to the soul. We cannot easily
form to ourselves an idea of these terrific creeds.
Cradled from its birth in the fond embrace of
Christianity, our soul has been inebriated with the
confidence which she inspires. Hope, bearing the
cross, walks before us singing on the path of life. A
heavenly interpreter, she explains these mysterious
figures of clemency which religion shows at every
step, and stern justice itself is presented beneath
the veil of mercy. The spiritual world, all resplen-
dant with the emblems of the eternal union, is but
the reflected glory of Christ, residing in the midst
of men to satiate them with truth and love : so that
this powerful faith in the human presence of the
Divinity overawes our weak nature but in order to
console and strengthen it. By the same force with
which it might overwhelm, it exalts it, and commu-
nicates to it, if we may so speak, by all the power
it exercises on it, an impulse of ascension towards
the superior world, where, in the unveiled presence
of the Deity, intelligence and love will expand
without an effort.

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Protestantism which has rejected this magnificent
gift is the absence of Christ, as Deism is, in a
more general order of ideas, the absence of the
Divinity. With the Bible in his hand, the Protestant
fancies that he communicates with the living Truth ;
but is it on the material form of the words, or on
their real sense that this communication depends ?
And whereas it is the reason of each Protestant that
determines for him the sense of the Bible, how can
this ever varying reason be a transmission of the
reason eternally unchangeable ? How can so many
interpretations that destroy one another be an ema-
nation of the substantial "Word, which like God
himself, bears the character of unity ? There is
between them that vast space which separates illusion
from immutable reality. You imagine that you
enjoy the immediate presence of the sun of intelli-
gences, and nothing is present to you, save the
shadows of your own mind. Deifying your thoughts,
you believe that you converse freely with the Word,
whilst you are separated from it by the profound
abyss which pride has interposed. The Protestants
resemble an unhappy wanderer on the deep, who

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63

mistakes for the paternal shore those hills of mist,
which are capriciously raised and destroyed by the
winds. But the illusion soon vanishes. The fantas-
tical horizon which surrounds them changes every
instant : their inconstant opinions come into collision,
separate, scatter, and suddenly reveal to them
the waves of boundless scepticism. Hence the
anguish of those who desirous of faith, but
weak in will, are bound to Protestantism by
temporal ties. They behold with terror the agitations
of an unlimited scepticism which assail it on every
side.* This spectacle, so afflicting to every Christian
heart, hurries them into the opposite extreme. The
propensity to illuminism, which has been found
at every period among this class of Protestants,
augments and strengthens in proportion as rationalism
destroys the little faith which the reformation has
preserved. f In this exaltation they seek an asylum
against doubt. In effect every Protestant is placed
in this dilemma : if he do not believe himself
infallible, he has no certainty for his faith, if he

* Cunctaeque profundum pontum adspectabant flentes.
f Vide note ix.

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believe himself infallible, each of his judgments
must appear to him a ray of the increated intelli-
gence. He ought, according to the remark of
Bossuet deem all his thoughts to be emanations of
tlie Deity ; an intellectual pantheism which directly
leads to the other.

A similar alternative is produced with regard to
the sentiments of the heart ; for, owing to the unity
of the human soul, the laws of intelligence and love
are parallel. If the reason of each individual needs
an exterior invariable rule, in order that it may not
succumb to doubt, which is the consciousness of its
own weakness, the heart too, particularly in the order
of divine things, requires an exterior principle of
love that may continually act upon it, to save it from
its own inconstancy, its strong inclination to the
earth, and its liability to become weary even of God
himself. Hence it is that this perfect piety, exclu-
sively peculiar to christian ages, has been developed
under the empire of faith in the permanent presence
of God whose delight is to dwell with the children,
of men. In Protestantism the soul of man is deprived
of this daily, and if it may be so said, this fond

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65

communion, with him who is spirit and life. But as
it feels the want of these frequent communications to
maintain piety at the height to which it has been
raised by Christianity, they are obliged, when they
aspire to this spiritual life, to substitute for catholic
faith in the real presence the dazzling fanaticism of
inspiration. Then all the movements of the heart
are a divine impulse, each respiration of the soul a
communion, each affection is Christ himself. This
mysticism, which in reality is but a sentimental
pantheism, is also a sort of internal theurgy, differing
from the ancient idolatrous theurgy in as much as
it is purely spiritual, for Christianity has spiritualized
every thing, even error itself. But this fanaticism
consecrates in principle every folly as well as every
passion; and the history of protestantism has
demonstrated its results. On the other hand if their
reason recoils at it, then feeling the impotence of
attaining to that sublime christian piety, for the
acquisition of which their heart, deprived of every
exterior principle of love, finds not within itself the
necessary conditions, they regard it as an idle dream,
and falling into indifference on this point, the life of

E

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the senses resumes its empire over the life of the
soul which becomes extinct. This two-fold tendency
in the sentimental, coresponds to that which protes-
tantism has presented in the logical order : for the
fanaticism of inspiration is like the illuminism of the
heart, and indifference is but the scepticism of the will.
Just as man inclines to one or the other side, he meets,
as we have seen, with pantheism or inanity. Pro-
testantism must inevitably end by splitting into two
classes : the one of mystical illuminati, tormented
by a sort of monomania ; the other of sceptical and
indifferent rationalists, with whom there will remain
but the shadow of man, of that being who lives on
truth and love. The majority of its followers, unable
to support these excesses, will return in crowds to
the Church, and this salutary movement has already
commenced. Children of the holy City, look towards
the desert ; do you not see that vast crowd of intel-
ligences which have traversed it in the sweat of their
brow, and who press to the gate of the habitable city ?
Urbem orant. They seek that to which all the powers
of reason and of the heart forcibly impel them, and
which she alone can impart to them. For she alone,

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67

possessing the secret of creation, which is neither
the separation of man from God, nor his identity
with him, unites even on the earth, in the most
intimate manner, the finite to the infinite being by
the principle of faith and of love.

The various considerations at which we have
glanced may be comprised in this formula. 6 ' Every
system of religion exclusive of the real presence, is,
by that degeneracy, in a greater degree inferior to
Catholicism, than Catholicism hi its present state, is to
the religion of heaven;" since that is but the eternal
consummation of the union entered on here below.

To express this great law of the moral world, the
allegorical genius of antiquity would fix this inscrip-
tion at the beginning of the road which leads to
where Protestantism has nearly arrived. " The
empire of death, where the father of gods and men
never descends, sinks in the night of chaos a distance
twice as great as the space embraced by the look of
mortals, when, from the earth where God placed
them, they raise their eyes to ethereal Olympus.*

* Bis patet in preceps tantum, tenditque sub umbras.

Quantum ad aetherum cali suspectus Olympum. — Virg. En. 1. vi.

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The essence of true Christianity being every day
more clearly perceived, in proportion as the ephemeral
Christianity of sectarians wastes and disappears, the
moment is approaching when reason shall see, almost
face to face, this capital truth viz. , that the perpetual
presence of the regenerating Word, under the
emblems of a divine remedy, is the vital principle of
Christianity in its relation with the heart of man, as
the permanent presence of the Word, the eternal
light, which the Church, interpreter of the divine
Word, imparts to every man under the veil of human
language, is the fundamental principle of Christianity
in its connexions with intelligence. This admi-
rable unity of the divine plan did not escape the
pious author, who without an effort discovered the
most sublime truths, because he contemplated all
with an humble and a pure look. " For in this life,
says he, I find there are two things especially
necessary for me, without which this miserable
life would be insupportable. Whilst I am kept in
the prison of this body, I acknowledge myself to
need two things viz., food and light.

Thou hast therefore given to me, weak as I am, thy

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69

sacred body for the nourishment of my soul and body,
and thou hast set thy word as a lamp to my feet.
Without these two things I could not well live ; for
the word of God is the light of my soul, and thy
sacrament is the bread of life.* Thus Christianity,
as a whole, is but a great charity bestowed on a great
misery. This is the secret of its unity : it is one by
its merciful proportion to all our faults. At the sight
of this touching harmony, reflection must give place
to a hymn, and reason prostrate adores in silence.

* Imitation of Christ, liv. iv., chap. It.

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CHAPTER Y.

The Eucharist viewed in relation to the religious
wants of the soul.

There are two wants in human nature which Eeli-
gion alone can satisfy ; the one, that of the practical,
the other, that of the interior life. By the
name of practical life, I do not mean that activity
which is limited to the world of the senses, but that
course of conduct which is connected with the moral
order, as presented to us here below in the visible
creation. For this temporary social state, comprised
between the cradle and the grave, subsists, in a
moral point of view, only in the continual application
of the most sublime truths to gross and transitory
phenomena. What, for instance, is a cup of
water ? A means to purchase the possession of

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71

God himself, if you choose to apply it by
giving it to a poor man. Human life is composed of
small actions which accomplish great duties. Man
labours on the same material as the animal, but to
produce a divine work. Shut up amid the dust of
our terrestrial laboratory, we impress the features of
the Deity on our clay ; we fashion, if I may so say,
the image of the eternal beauty. Woe to every
doctrine that would not lead man energetically and
continually to this humble — practical life, on which
society is based. Such a proud spiritualism would
include the principle of universal dissolution ; for,
according to the primitive belief, the intelligences,
superior to man, are the ministers of God even in
the government of the physical order, nay the
Eternal himself did not disdain to mould the material
element.

But this practical life does not fill up the vast
capacity of the human soul, nor exhaust all its
activity. Whilst continually entering, to discharge our
present obligations, into this narrow world of sensa-
tions which is common to us with animals, the
soul ever preserves a secret consciousness, and as

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it were a second view of another existence.
Swayed by the instinct of futurity, she aspires to a
state where the true, the good, the beautiful, freed
from this gross alloy, will present themselves to her
embrace under purer forms. Now, as soon as an
intelligent being has an idea of a more perfect state,
it ardently desires, without departing from the
situation to which it is bound, to realize a transition
from the one to the other ; for nothing is abrupt or
defective in the harmonious developement of beings.
Hence that order of sentiments which composes the
mystical life, an expression too frequently misunder-
stood, and which in reality signifies but a natural
instinct of the soul, since it shews itself on all the
points of the circle where sentiment is displayed. In
fact who does not know that in the arts, in love, glory,
heroism, man finds himself pursuing beyond all
realities this ideal infinity whose extent is restrained
and whose purity is tarnished by the positive order ;
why then suppress these aspirations in Religion alone,
which has the closest affinity with the end of his
creation ? Why not seek for his entire being, what
he aspires to in all its emanations? Why not prepare

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73

for his destiny by a previous essay, like one who
composes the prologue for a poem, or who prepares
the prelude which precedes a concert ? To destroy
this lofty instinct, would be to fetter all the powers
of the soul, for the religious sentiment eminently
embraces all others ; it would be to mutilate our
being in its nobler part. The most abject materialism
alone could embrace this state of degradation ! Man
indeed would be but the perfection of a mere animal,
were he not the embryo of a celestial spirit. This
order of sentiments is to a certain degree common
to all men profoundly religious, for it is but the
reflection of faith in the heart. The poor peasant,
who, listening to the exhortation of his pastor, whom
he may not fully comprehend, tells you that his soul
feels the truth of the appeal, enters according to his
manner into the mystical life, as the people with their
lyric songs and poems enter after their manner into the
ideal of poetry. But in proportion as we ascend the
scale of humanity,this disposition manifests itself more
forcibly, particularly in superior minds, in the hearts
of the elect, from Confucius and Plato, to Fenelon
and Vincent of Paul. The purer the flame, the

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higher it mounts, and the master spirits in order to
support this mystical life are obliged to wing their
way more frequently into that tranquil region, where
they breathe the air of a more divine world.

The two wants to which we have alluded must be
satisfied that whatever is good and beautiful in
human nature may have its free expansion. Suppress
every trace of the mystical life, and you arrive at
the brutal activity of the London populace. Suppress
the esteem and taste of the practical life, and
there remains but the senseless quietism of the
Indian Priest. Every religious system which alters,
in a single point, one of these essential modes of our
being, approximates, in a greater or less degree, to
one or other of these two species of degradation.
The perfection of man depends on their simultaneous
developement : the one restrains the soul within the
present, the other impels it towards the future order,
and as this star of the moral order, belongs to both
worlds, it cannot accomplish its career but by the
harmonious combination of this two-fold attraction.

It has been frequently remarked that, when
Protestant mysticism does not present itself under

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75

the form of fanaticism, it for the most part sinks
into a religious melancholy. Besides the injuries it
inflicts on the intellectual faculties, this malady,
weakening by its effects the activity of the soul,
proceeds to attack the generative principle of good
works, and consequently the moral fecundity of
man, whilst among the sects hostile to mysticism,
this moral decay is replaced, as may be seen in the
metropolis of Calvinism, by a fever for gold and
all the sensual enjoyments of life. Protestantism
is opposed to the alliance of the interior and social
life ; for, individualism in breaking the ties by which
spirits are bound together, produces isolated forms
of belief which in turn engender a solitary mysticism.
The human mind under such circumstances seeks
life within itself, for there also it seeks truth. The
heart feeds with complacency on itself as reason
idolizes itself, and, though rationalism and mad-
ness have each their distinctive traits, if you
examine more closely you will find in both but the
Proteus of egotism.

We invite every reflecting and philosophic mind,
capable of applying the test of experience to the

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influence of doctrines, to contrast, in this respect,
the spirit of Protestantism with the genius of
the Catholic religion, which has unceasingly
produced a parallel developement of the interior
and social life, so harmoniously combined, that the
action and reaction is uniform and continual. This
is not the place to sound the depths of a subject
which in order to be fully treated, should embrace
the moral history of humanity. Not to depart from
the limits of our present subject, we shall simply
remark how, among the causes that concur in
establishing the peculiar character of Catholicism,
the eucharistic faith holds the first rank. It is not
only a principle eminently active in each of these
two orders ; but as they tend to separate, because
the wants to which they correspond crave to be
satisfied at the cost of each other, this tenet is the
powerful link which inseparably unites them. For
if this mystery, which is itself but an initiation to
the mysteries of a future life, impel the soul beyond
the present order, on the other hand the dispo-
sition strictly necessary to approach it is the accom-
plishment of all the obligations of ordinary life, and

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77

particularly of those which one might be most in-
clined to despise, and to consider most repulsive.

Extending its vivifying influence to the two
extremities of the moral world, it reaches at the
same time the most humble duties and the loftiest
aspirations of the soul. This bread of angels, which
has become the bread of man, imparts to the faithful
a two-fold existence. Like Raphael, they may say to
these indigent souls who can only beg, at the banquet
of time, the gross food of voluptuousness and pride.
" I seemed indeed to eat and to drink with you but
I use an invisible meat and drink which cannot be
seen by man."* But the same action, which
associates him with angels, reconducts him by
the road of virtue into human society. For all is
social in Catholicism, interwoven as it is with com-
mon tradition. It is for this reason that the most
magnificent gift of divine love is confided, not to
an individual, but to the Church. She alone is its
depository, as she alone is the depository of eternal
Truth. Before the holy of holies can be approached,

* Sed ego cibo invisibili, et potu quiab homiaibus videri non
potest, utor.— -Tob., chap, xii., v. 19.

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the individual conscience is submitted to the power of
religious society, in the person of one of its ministers
who pronounces the sentence of grace. The sanc-
tuary is thrown open, and Penitence freed from
remorse, and Innocence assured of its purity
by the judgment of authority go hand in hand, amid
the public prayers, to seat themselves at the universal
banquet of the just. Thus the faithful are not
admitted to this intimate union with Christ but by
drawing more closely the links which bind them to
the Church, the common parent of all Christians ;
and the greatest act of the mystical life is itself a great
social action.

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79

CHAPTER VI.

Social Life> — The Priesthood . Public Worship.
Confession.

It is by its priesthood only that religious society
acts in the moral government of the world. This
institution is associated with an order of ideas supe-
rior to that which ordinarily strikes the mind, ever
prone to stop at exterior effects, instead of penetrating
the essence of things. The priest is presented to the
view of man under the endearing attributes of the
father of the poor, the consoler of the afflicted, the
confident of the weary and heavy-laden conscience.
But this Helo of charity which is the necessary
emanation of the sacerdotal character is not its
perfect type. The fundamental idea of the priest-
hood was originally connected with that of Mediation.

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As sacrifice united to prayer were the figures of the
expiation solicited by the aspirations of the human
race, so those who were deputed to offer them up
became the special representatives of the invisible
Mediator, the supreme and universal Pontiff of
creation. Hence that character of minister of peace,
Mediation being but the peace of heaven with earth;
hence the many privations which the creeds of all
nations exacted from the priest, for he ought to bear
more than other mortals a closer resemblance to the
great victim; hence that perpetual or temporary
continence recommended him by antiquity, and
which, in many places, was of strict obligation.
Mankind every where, and at the periods most
disgraced by licentiousness, recognized in perfect
continence the mens dimnior of sanctity. As poetry
is a diviner eloquence, so chastity, which raises man
above the senses, is as it were the sacred poetry of
virtue. The social necessity, which interdicts to the
generality of mankind the practice of this virtue, no
more excludes it in the small number, than the
necessity equally general of corporal labour destroys
that other law of humanity, which to a small number

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81

gives leisure to embody in song their lofty medita-
tions. Mankind must have its elite. Let the sophist
in his affected singularity pride himself on being
insensible to the merit of chastity ; has he reason to
glory at being divested of that perception of moral
beauty common to the human race? Should his eye,
on viewing the lily of the fields, the symbol of purity,
be affected by sensations contrary to those commonly
experienced, he would at once pronounce it
diseased : does this vicious discordance change its
character when it affects the moral sentiment — the
vision of the soul ? When philosophy, even that
of the material school, was forced to admit the fact
that the " notion of chastity being pleasing to God
pervaded the Globe."* Why did it not perceive that
a moral phenomenon, so directly opposed to the
propensities of man, from the very circumstance of
its not being based on reasoning, must necessarily
have had its source in a superior order. The general
sentiment which supports and cherishes modesty,
has ever connected with the work of the flesh a

* American Letters of Carle, note of the Translator, Tom
1, page 119.

F

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mysterious idea of pollution, an unaccountable
sentiment, if it be not derived from a confused
recollection of that original corruption which vitiated
in man the very source of life. All the primitive
traditions declared that the personage whom they
announced as the future Redeemer of mankind was
to be born of a Virgin. From this order of ideas
arose the general disposition of imposing on priests,
the substitutes of the Mediator, virginal continence
and expiatory austerities; and if both have been
mutually attracted by a sort of permanent affinity, to
combine in the priesthood, it is because they had
originated in a common source.

All these ideas, diffused through the universe,
were the as yet imperfect elements of the sacer-
dotal character realized by Catholicism, and which
could not have been accomplished till the Saviour
himself had exteriorly realized the eternal sacrifice.
The catholic priesthood is constituted like that of
the primitive religion, by the relation the priest
bears to the Mediator, a relation much more sacred
and august since its immediate object is, not a
typical victim, but the person of Christ, who is

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83

at the same time priest and victim. Theology
demies the priesthood to be — the functions relative
to the true body of Christ, and to his mystical
body which is the Church. The different degrees
of holiness attached to the minor orders, are deter-
mined by their connexion more or less direct with
the Eucharist. The high and inviolable perfection
of catholic celibacy is principally derived from the
same cause. The Popes and Councils well knew
that the conjugal state weakens the divine union
which should exist between the pastor and his
church, as well as his spiritual paternity, by placing
elsewheie the centre of his affections and duties.
They conceive that the priesthood ought to absorb the
entire man . But, however strong this reason may be,
sacerdotal purity springs from a higher source ;
and all tradition points out its primary cause in the
Tabernacle. Thus the institution of ecclesiastical
celibacy, though its developement required time,
and though it suffered many modifications, is
universal in its principle.* If the oriental churches
were in this respect less severe than those more
* Vide Note xi.

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immediately subject to the Papal influence, that
relaxation confirms the rule ; for, though they did
not impose it on all priests, of the second order who,
according to their discipline, rarely celebrated the
holy mysteries, they maintained it inviolable for
Bishops.

But if the priest, associated to the oblation of the
supreme sacrifice, must raise himself by an angelic
purity above other men, he must also humble
himself beneath them, in order to take upon him
their misery, carry their crosses, and, renewing in
his person the suffering marks of the adorable
victim, as well as the image of his innocence, offer
up with the incense of prayer the burning holocaust
of charity. The mystic immolation of which he is
the minister prescribes to him the immolation of
himself. All tradition has unanimously concurred
in drawing this consequence from the Eucharistic
dogma. Would I could relate here the innumerable
proofs of this logic of love. I can only pray its
prejudiced adversaries to make it the subject of their
serious meditation. I would vouch that, on such a
review, no honest man, whatever his errors might

THE EUCHARIST.

65

be, could have the melancholy hardihood to declaim
against so amiable a faith. Did it not yet find place
in his heart, at least he would learn to respect it.
Is there not something divine in every benefit ?

But wherever sacrifice ceases, the man remains and
the priest disappears. Look at the Jews : no where
did the priesthood strike deeper roots than among
that people ; no where was it surrounded by more
veneration. What are at the present day the Rabbins,
who have superseded the priests of that people now
disinherited of all sacrifice ? The anathema which
pursues their degraded ministry, has been proclaimed
by the mouths of Israelites. " Their power,
exclaim their own followers, can effect nothing *
for the salvation of our souls." The same obser-
vation applys to protestantism. The ancient idea of
the priesthood is one of the human ideas which it
lost with sacrifice. The day on which the fire of
the eternal holocaust was extinguished, beheld the
divine mark effaced from the brow of its ministers.
The opinion of the protestant public refuses them

* Jewish Consistories of France, by M. Singer, page 32,
Paris, 1820.

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that pious respect, which all the people of the earth
have attached to the sacerdotal character. It does
not exact from them these superior virtues which
Catholicism imposes on its priesthood, and with great
justice, for it would be unfair to expect a consequence
when the principle had been destroyed. This
equitable indulgence sometimes shews itself with
great naivete. I shall select an example out of
many, and that within the pale of the English
church, which however has preserved, better than
the other sects, some faint resemblance of the
priesthood. Dr. Burnet, relating the legal assassina-
tion of Charles 1st, admits that Bishop Juxon, who
assisted him in his last moments, " performed his
duty so dryly and so coldly, as to make little or no
effort to infuse any lofty sentiments into the mind of
his Boyal master " yet the mitred historian asserts
that he did his duty as an honest man* Suppose
that Abbe Edgeworth had acted like Juxon, could
you conceive how a French prelate, writing the
history of the revolution, would tell you that the

* Hist of the last revolutions of England, Tom. 1, liv. L

THE EUCHARIST.

87

confessor of the son of St. Lewis did his duty as an
honest man, before that scaffold the foot of which
was bathed with the blood of martyrs, and above
which the heavens opened. Such a supposition
would be revolting to the feelings of catholics, and
in their eyes every priest who, in descending from
the altar, possessed no other recommendation than
that of being an honest man, would be a monster.

Now if we consider, on the one hand, that the
catholic priesthood tends, by its constant and univer-
sal action, to lead men to the practice of duty, and,
on the other, that the influence of the priesthood is
proportioned to the veneration it inspires, we shall
easily conceive how the Eucharist, of which the
sacerdotal character, as understood in Catholicism,
is the sublime emanation, already exercises in this
respect a prodigious power in establishing the reign
of virtue on the earth. Catholicism moves the
world in order to elevate it to heaven, the priesthood
is its instrument, the real presence, its support.

All great influence, exercised on mankind, can
only result from the combination of two different
modes of action, for, in man as well as in all other

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beings, we must distinguish what is general or
common to the entire species, from what is purely
individual. The public mode of action affects men
collectively by addressing itself to human nature :
but as it is differently modified in each of us, hence
the necessity of an individual mode of action,
corresponding to the individuality of every man.
Catholicism combines, in a high degree, these two
modes, for whilst by its public worship, it acts on
the multitude, with unequaled energy, as is gene-
rally acknowledged, confession constitutes its mode
of action proportioned to the different necessities of
individuals, it is the secret organ which particularizes
for each of the faithful, this spirit of life that
animates the vast body of the Church.

The philosophers who have endeavoured to
explain the origin of public worship have assigned
every possible reason except the true one. The
hypothesis of a primitive religion, invented by man,
which is the basis of all their theories, has drawn
them, by substituting abstractions for facts, from the
sphere of real life on this as on many other points ;
for every error originates in this elaborate absurdity.

THE EUCHARIST.

89

They have done much to prove that public worship
is useful, not suspecting that it is rigorously neces-
sary. Eeligion having been originally traditional,
and that tradition ' comprehending, besides the
explanation of the truths primitively revealed, certain
expiatory rites, which have been also regarded by all
nations as of divine institution, can this common
tradition be conceived without a common worship ?
It was not then a mere expediency on the part of
Religion, but the essential condition of its 'exis-
tence. Thus, as soon as this two-fold basis of
tradition is shaken, public worship totters and falls,
as we see in the reformation : a thousand protestant
voices have been raised to announce its ruin.* The
protestant states of Germany have recently made
great efforts to revive it : but does history present an
example of a worship having been revived by police
ordinances ? A jewish rigidity on the most minute
points is united, in the English system, with an
epicuran effeminacy, which makes the devout class,
under the most trifling pretext, dispense with the

* Vide, De Starck's work on the reunion of the different
Christian communions.

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religious duties prescribed by their liturgy. The
negative part of their worship is maintained as a
legal establishment, while the positive part crumbles
to decay : this is the forerunner of death. Generally,
in all the systems that reject tradition and the real
presence, the ancient precept of regularly assisting,
on the Lord's day, at the divine office, has lost its
character of law, and at most is considered a council
subject to the convenience of each individual. After
all, why should it be necessary for a protestant to
assist regularly at Church ? Has he not the Bible
at home? Does he not recognise in himself the
right of interpreting it ? Why then should he
address himself to the Deity by the lips of a minis-
ter ? In a system based on mental independence, why
interpose a human agent between him and God ?
His house ought to be his temple, as his reason
is his priest. The marked tendency of Protestant-
ism to concentrate itself in a domestic worship,
will be the transition to a worship purely individual,
the only one which indeed harmonizes with the
logical principle of Protestantism. The same may
be said of Deism, which reposes on a similar prin-

THE EUCHARIST.

01

ciple, and which is the Protestantism of the primitive
religion.

With Catholics, on the contrary, social worship is,
as it formerly had been, an essential condition of
Religion. They are obliged to assemble frequently
in the temple, to find what can be found only there —
the two-fold tradition of truth and of the mysteries
of love. The real presence, the focus of public
worship, vivifies it by its perpetual action, and raises
it to the highest degree of sublimity that a terrestrial
worship can attain. The magnificence of Catholicism
which spiritualizes the senses themselves, and the
repulsive nakedness of Calvinism, may be considered
as two extreme points, between which are found
divers liturgies more or less meager, in proportion
as the doctrine they represent is more or less remo-
ved from the catholic mystery. All the ceremonies
of the Church tend towards this centre of grace, as,
in the temples raised by the genius of Christianity,
all the lines of architecture have a beautiful but
subordinate relation to the sanctuary ; this is the
reason why the catholic worship, the expression of
boundless love, as the physical world is the expres-

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sion of infinite power, moves the heart as profoundly
as the magnificence of nature impresses the under-
standing.

All is interwoven : the great moral causes act at
a distance, and produce their effects even where the
vulgar do not imagine their influence to reach. It
is now sufficiently proved that mental derange-
ment is far more frequent among a protestant than
among a catholic population. This difference
proceeds no donbt from the fact, that Catholicism,
in submitting individual to the general reason,
upholds the conservative law of intelligence,
whilst individualism, by isolating and abandoning
man to himself without a preserving rule, places
him in an unnatural position, which is a perma-
nent source of disorder and extravagance. But
this first cause resolves itself, if I may so speak, into
many subordinate ones, each of which partially tends
to the general result. The influence of catholic
legislation merits, on this point, serious attention.
Let us limit ourselves to one of its results, which
will lead to the discovery of many others. As soon
as a disposition to mental aberration is developed, it

THE EUCHARIST.

93

impels man to retire from society in order that he
may live to himself. The instinct of this frightful
malady urges him to seek, in intellectual indepen-
dence, the freedom of delirium. But, in general,
the evil is not immediately consummated. In the
gradual passage from perfect reason to settled
insanity, man will be found to retain sufficient power
over himself to resist the savage want of isolation,
provided an active principle, and particularly the
most active of all, the religious principle, excite him
to return to society and thereby to common sense.
The precept which strictly obliges the catholic to
renew, at least once a week, by assisting at the public
worship, the relation which binds him to God and
man, rescues him from this fatal solitude, where his
intellect would have been bewildered in order to
place him in a society of reason, peace, and love.
Conscience obliges him to become a man that he
may remain a christian ; and this act, frequently
repeated, contributes more than is generally supposed
to prevent or arrest the developement of madness.

The real presence, the basis of the public worship
by which Catholicism acts on men in the aggregate,

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is not less intimately connected with the practice of
confession, the organ through which it acts in a
mode, corresponding to the various necessities of
individuals.* On this point let us attend to an
English Writer who, though catholic by conviction,
was surprised by death within the pale of Protes-
tantism, so true it is that God alone knows what
passes in the depths of the human heart. "All
nations, says lord Fitz- William,]" have their religion
and their laws; their religion to inculcate virtue
and morality, — and their laws to punish crime. In
this the Roman Catholic, as well as all other states,
contemplate but the same object. But in the
Roman Catholic Religion alone are to be found
laws whose authority is far more imperious, and
concerning which no individual can deceive himself,
by any species of art or sophistry ; laws calculated
not only to inspire the love of virtue and morality,
but which farther render it obligatory to practice
them; laws which are not limited to the mere
punishment of crime, but extend to its prevention.

* Vide, Note xii.
f Letters of Atticus, dedicated to Louis xviii, then in England.

THE EUCHARIST.

95

These laws consist in the obligation which they
impose on all Eoman Catholics of communicating
at least once a year ; in the veneration which they
inculcate for that sacrament, and in the indispensible
and rigorous preparation which they exact in order
to receive it, or, in other words, in the belief of the
real presence, confession, penance, absolution, and
communion, on which they are based.

It may be truly said that in Eoman Catholic
States the entire economy of social order turns on
this pivot. It is to this wonderful institution they
owe their strength, their duration, their security,
and their happiness : hence arises an incontestable
principle, a sound maxim, which is the last link of
that long chain of reasonings which I have just
established, namely, that it is impossible to frame
any system of government whatsoever, which will
be permanent and advantageous, unless it be
founded on the Roman Catholic Religion. Every
other system is illusive.

The precepts which this Religion imposes on its
children, and the restraints to which it subjects
them, are so little known to the sectaries who assail

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it, that indeed they can scarcely have any notion of
them. Some through ignorance are blind to them,
and others from prejudice treat them with ridi-
cule. In order then to instruct the ignorant and
undeceive the prejudiced, I must inform them that
all Roman Catholics are obliged to communicate at
least once a year, regard however being had to the
state of their conscience. Previously to the receiving
of this most august sacrament, before which the most
courageous among them are seized with fear and
trembling, they must all, without distinction or excep-
tion, confess their sins in the tribunal of penance ;
and no minister of that dreaded tribunal can permit
them to approach the Holy Table, until they shall
have punned their hearts by all the dispositions
necessary for the purpose. Now those indispensable
dispositions are contrition, the full and candid
acknowledgment of all the faults of which they
have been guilty, atonement for all injustices,
restitution of all goods unlawfully acquired, pardon
of all injuries, the abandonment of every criminal
and scandalous connexion, and the eradication
of envy, pride, hatred, avarice, ambition, dissi-

THE EUCHARIST.

97

mutation, ingratitude, and every sentiment opposed
to charity. Besides in that tribunal they must
solemnly pledge themselves before God to avoid
even the slightest faults, and to observe with a scru-
pulous exactitude all the sublime laws of the Gospel.
JFlwever, as the Apostle says, would approach the
holy table without these dispositions, and not discer-
ning the body of Jesus Christ, would receive his
own condemnation. Such is, and such has always
been, during eighteen hundred years, the fundamen-
tal and immutable doctrine of the Eoman Catholic
Church. And if it shall be objected that her children
are wicked or perverse, notwithstanding the links
wherewith she binds them, and the duties she impo-
ses upon them, what shall we say of the man who is
freed from these salutary restraints ?

What security, what pledge is not exacted from
every individual for the performance of his social
duties ; for the exercise of every virtue, integrity,
benevolence, charity, mercy ! Where shall we find
anything similar to this? Here conscience is
regulated before the tribunal of God himself, not
before that of the world. Here the culprit is

G

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his own accuser, but by no means his own judge.
And whilst the christian of a different communion
superficially examines himself, decides in his own
cause, and indulgently absolves himself, the catholic
christian is scrupulously examined by another,
awaits his sentence from Heaven, and sighs after
that consoling absolution which is accorded, refused,
or deferred, in the name of the ]&ost High. What
an admirable means for establishing between men
mutual confidence, and perfect harmony in the
discharge of their duties !

To pronounce on all questions of general impor-
tance, it is both just and right that our reasonings be
grounded on their general effects. Such is the course
I have adopted. But so great, alas, is human frailty,
that all Eoman Catholics, I must admit, do not
profit by the advantages afforded them. It is then
the duty, as indeed it is the highest interest of a
wise and vigilant government, to oppose any relax-
ation in the principles I have now developed. If in
a Roman Catholic State no person swerved from
their observance, the question would not be : which
is the best government? but rather in such a

THE EUCHARIST.

99

government what necessity for other laws? perhaps,
in such a case, all human laws would be as useless, .
and superfluous, as they are certainly ineffectual
wherever the Roman Catholic Religion is not their
basis." Lord Fitz- William, resuming his observa-
tions, reduces them to two social aphorisms which
cannot be too profoundly meditated.

Virtue, justice, and morality, should constitute
the basis of all governments.

It is impossible to establish virtue, justice, and
morality, on any solid foundation, rmthout the
tribunal of penance, because that tribunal, the most
formidable of all, takes cognizance of the conscience
of man, and directs it in a manner more efficacious
than any other ; now that tribunal belongs exclu-
sively to the Catholic Church.

It is impossible to establish the tribunal of
penance without a belief in the real presence* that
principal basis of catholic faith, because without
that belief the sacrament of communion loses
its dignity and value. Protestants approach the
Holy Table without fear, for they receive only
a sign commemorative of the body of Jesus Christ.

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On the other hand Catholics approach it with
dread, because they receive the very body of their
Redeemer. Thus wherever this belief was destroyed
the tribunal of penance ceased with it ; confession
became useless, as wherever this belief exists
confession is essential. And this tribunal, which is
necessarily established with it, renders imperative
the exercise of virtue, justice, and morality.
Therefore as I have already said it is impossible to
frame any 'permanent or advantageous system of
government , which is not founded on the Roman
Catholic Religion.

Here then we have the solution of the most
important of all questions, (next to that of the
immortality of the soul,) that can be presented to the
consideration of man, namely — Which is the best
government ? The more we study this question, the
more we shall perceive that the doctrine of the real
presence applys not only to governments, but to all
human affairs, that like the diapason in music, it
forms the concord of the entire, and becomes to the
moral what the sun is to the physical world.
Illumians omnes homines St. John.

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101

CHAPTER VIL

Catholic Charity.

If we contrast the nations who lived under the
primitive religion with those who have received
Christianity fully developed, we shall immediately
perceive that the sentiment of love has attained
among the latter a superior degree, corresponding
to a more perfect knowledge of the divine love. Eden
revealed the goodness, but Calvary, the charity of
God. From that hour man learned to love more
perfectly.

Creation — by which God, without imparting him-
self to man, gave something from himself, was a
magnificent boon of the infinite Being. Such was
the type of ancient beneficence. Man learned to

102 GERBET ON

share with his fellow man his superfluous goods,
after the example of him who communicated to
man, made to his likeness, a portion, and as it were,
the superabundance of the inexhaustible riches of
his own being. Hence the precept of charity ever
remained associated in the tradition of all nations
not excepting those in a state of barbarism, with
the recollection of the supreme benefactor, the
Father of the human family. " We all belong to the
same family, said the chief of an American tribe,
we are all the children of the great Spirit. When
the white man put their foot for the first time on our
lands, they were oppressed with hunger ; they had
no place where to prepare their beds, or light their
fires ; they were exausted ; they could do nothing
for themselves. Our Fathers had pity on their
distress, and willingly shared with them all that the
great spirit had given his red children."*

For the same reason, the beneficence prescribed
by the primitive religion did not attain a degree,
superior to the practice of alms, and other works of

* Memoirs of a Captive among the Indians ofNorth America^
London.

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103

a similar nature. Where, in effect, could man have
discovered the idea of a more perfect beneficence
than that of which God had given him the example.
But when the heavens opened, and this great mys-
tery of piety * shone forth in all its splendour,
the horizon of charity expanded. In not limiting his
bounty to partial benefits, as he had already done by
creation, but becoming himself the gift he bestowed
on man, God revealed an order of beneficence until
then unknown. The mysterious veil, which shrou-
ded from human intelligence the sight of the Holy
of holies, or love in its absolute perfection,
was rent asunder, and the world contemplated face
to face, on the mountain of sacrifice, the living
archtype of an infinite devotedness. Enlightened
and animated by this revelation of love, human
nature felt within itself the developement of a new
sentiment. The intelligence of the heart, to use
scriptural language, soared above its ancient limits,
and man learned to love and serve his fellow

* Manifesto magnum est pietatis sacramentum, quod mani-
festatum est in carne. Epist, pr. ad Timoth. cap, iii. v. 16.

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man, not merely at the expence of what he possessed,
but even at the sacrifice of his repose, his health,
and his life. We had seen, under the influence of
the primitive religion, men immolate themselves
for their parents, friends, and country, but none
for man, considered only as a member of the
human family. The perpetual miracle of christian
charity is, to have raised even to devotedness this
sentiment of beneficence which, under the primitive
society, was the link that united the family of man-
kind in the bonds of affection. It transcends
ancient beneficence as much as sacrifice does a mere
act of kindness. In this particularly consists the
regeneration of love. The beneficence that was
limited to alms was charity in its infancy, as yet
restrained by the elements of this world. It was at
the foot of the cross it attained its maturity. From
that moment, replenished with courage and life, it
rejoices in the most painful labour, triumphs over
all the repugnances of nature, faces death with a
serene eye, and on its pale brow exhibits the halo of
martyrdom.

Hence we see that protestant countries, which

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105

deem the subscription list, the test of christian charity
and reduce it to a mere question of arithmetic, have
lost its genuine notion. The Saviour having come,
not to destroy, hut to fulfil the law, there is no
doubt but the ancient and universal precept of alms-
giving ought, not only exist, but be more generously
observed by the nations which have felt, in any
degree, the influence of Christianity, and that such
is the fact will appear in the most striking manner,
by comparing Mahometanism, one of the most degra-
ded among the christian sects, with the most
distinguished of the Pagan nations. This sort of
beneficence which is to be seen wherever the primi-
tive religion has been known and practiced, ought
also be found among protestant nations ; for, as long
as the principle of mental independence has not
produced its last results, it must necessarily preserve
some common faith in these primitive truths, without
which no society, be it even barbarous or corrupt,
could exist. It is equally incontestible that the
countries separated from catholic unity, among whom
a true and modest beneficence is practiced, superior
by its activity to that of ancient nations, are

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precisely those where the mass of the people, less
subject to the sceptical action of individual rationa-
lism, have preserved, by virtue of a contrary principle,
more positive faith in those christian dogmas which
ancient protestantism had borrowed from the Catholic
Church. But as the character which particularly
distinguishes christian devotedness from primitive
beneficence, does not merely consist in a greater
multiplicity of good works of the same class, but
rather in a new species of good works, the Church,
the depository of genuine Christianity, ought not only
perpetuate this beneficence of the primitive times,
of which the creative bounty was the model, but
further she ought unceasingly produce that perfect
charity whose type is found in the sacrifice of
redemption.

The comparison of Catholicism with protestantism
presents, on this point, a remarkable phenomenon of
the moral world, which attracted the attention of
Voltaire. " The nations separated from the Roman
communion have but imperfectly imitated, that
generous charity"* by which the latter is charac-
Essay on manners, torn. iii. c. 139.

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107

terised. As the spirit of any church eminently
shews itself in its clergy, let us compare with the
catholic priesthood, I was about to say the priesthood
— no, the ministry of the protestant communion. I
readily admit all the traits of individual beneficence
which may be quoted in its favour. One thing only
I ask ; shew me in that clergy, as a body, the spirit
of sacrifice. I have not met with a single instance
in their history, even at the period of their greatest
religious fervour, to prove that they had received
grace to brave pestilence in the discharge of the first
of their duties, " In 1543 some ministers presented
themselves to the council of Geneva, confessing that
it was their duty to console those who were attacked,
by pestilence, but none of them having courage
enough to do so, they prayed the council to pardon
them their weakness, God not having given them
grace to encounter the danger with the necessary
intrepidity, with the exception of Mathew Geneston,
who offered to go if the lot should fall on him" *
How different the language which Cardinal Borromeo

* State Registeries of the Genevian Republic, from 1535 to
1792.

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GEHBET ON

addressed to his clergy almost at the same time, and
in similar circumstances. " The most tender care
that the best of fathers can bestow on his children in
this time of desolation, the Bishop should bestow on
his people both by his zeal and his ministry, in order
that other men, stimulated by his example, may
embrace, all the works of christian charity. As to
parish priests and all those who have charge of souls,
far from them be the thought to deprive their flocks
of the most trifling services, at a time when they are
so essential to them. Let them take the fixed
determination to brave them all with a good heart,
even death itself, rather than abandon, in this utter
destitution of all aid, the faithful confided to their
care by Christ who purchased them with his blood."*

* Tempore pestilentias episcopus qusecumque pietatis officia
a parente optimo filiis praestari afflictissimo illo tempore opor-
teat, ea studio et ministerio suo ita praestabit ut ad omnia
caritatis christianae opera caeteri homines inflammentur. Parochi
autem, animarumve curatores, tantum abest ut necessario
co tempore populum cujus curam geruut, aliquo modo destituanr,
ut fixa auimi deliberatione sibi statuendum putent omnia prorsuF-
etiam mortis pericula, paratissimo animo subire, potius quam
fldeles Christi sanguine redeinptos ac sibi praecipue in curam
traditos in summa pene omnium adjumentorum necessitate
deserere. Concil, mediol, v. part ii; cap. 4.

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109

Neither he, nor his priests, nor so many poor friars,
at whom the intrepid pastors of Geneva were accus-
tomed to sneer in safety, waited until the lot should
fall on them to fly to the bed of pestilence. A
parralel instituted between the conduct of both
clergy amid such frightful calamities would afford
matter for a moral statistic replete with interest. At
all periods, and even recently, when a contagious
malady was devastating some cantons of Germany,
where the two religious creeds came in contact, the
same contrast was strikingly manifested : it attracted
the notice of the public journals. In fact we find it
to prevail every where: "compare the protestant
missions to our missions: what an unspeakable
difference in the spirit which forms them, the means
by which they operate, the success with which they
are respectively attended ! Where are the protestant
ministers who sacrifice life in announcing to the
American Savage or to the learned Chinese the good
tidings of salvation ? England may, as long as she
please, boast of her apostles at Lancaster and her
bible societies ; she may, in pompous reports, describe
the progress of agriculture among the Negroes, and

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of the elementary sciences among the Hindoos ; all
these pitiful counting-house missions, whereof policy-
is the sole mover, as gold is the sole agent, only
serve to demonstrate' the incurable religious apathy
of protestant societies, alive to interest alone, and
whoever can distinguish a noble action, inspired by
a sublime motive, from a proceeding dictated by
mercenary calculation, must recognise, if he be
sincere, how infinite the distance between the Bishop
of Tabarca, who lately fell by the sword of persecution,
in the midst of the flock gained to Christianity by
his courage and labours, and the Methodist missi-
onary, whose prudent zeal conducts him only to
places where his life is not exposed to danger, and
who, according to a previous contract, is paid by the
head for his converts.'"* Transcending the limits of
this world, the devotedness of our missionaries has
embraced every species of suffering and death. They
have been seen crowding the dungeons of Constan-
tinople, expiring with the hymn of triumph on their
lips beneath the tomahawk of the savage, and pouring

* Melanges of the Abbe de la Mennais, torn. 1, p. 3G6.

THE EUCHARIST.

Ill

out in torrents on the Calvaries of Japan the blood
of redemption which flowed in their veins. Name
the desert, the rock of the ocean, unvisited by
conquest or commerce, which has not been rendered
glorious by the tomb of some martyr of Catholic
Charity. And whilst the love which animates the
Church would appear to be exhausted from so many
losses, we perceive it, issuing from her bosom, in
various forms, in these numerous religious congre-
gations, whose members devoted body and soul to
the service of suffering humanity, offer themselves
up as a holocaust of charity ; a devotedness which is
in many respects more touching than that of martyr-
dom. For if an effort of courage be necessary to
sacrifice life, something still greater is required in
order to support an entire life of sacrifice. A
Protestant journal, wishing to cite the two heroes
of Christian charity, selected among the Catholics
Vincent of Paul, and among the Protestants, not a
minister, what indeed is truly remarkable, but a
worthy philantrophic traveller. A single trait will
suffice to characterize these two men. The monument
raised in "Westminster Abbey to the memory of

112 GERBET ON

Howard, represents him holding in his hand plans of
beneficence on a roll of paper. The poor Catholic
priest has recorded his, as God has stamped his
power, in his works, and one of his creations is the
heart of those virgins who are the heroic mothers of
all the unfortunate.

What is the donation of some pieces of gold,
which does not deprive the rich man of a single
enjoyment, compared with the bestowal of one's self*?
Who is not struck by the difference between a
subscriber to the Bible Societies and a sister of
charity ? The retiring modesty of Catholic devoted-
ness serves but to increase its splendour. I appeal
to the conscientious testimony of all for the fact, that,
though Protestantism presents administrations of
beneficence, we look in vain for the humble victims
of charity wherever it prevails.

Let us now attend to the important truth which
results from all these facts. Christian charity is
superior to ancient beneficence. What is the source
of this superiority ? a more extensive manifestation of
divine love. Catholic charity compared to Protestant
beneficence, exhibits a similar superiority, which

THE EUCHARIST.

113

consequently must have for its principle the true,
and for the same reason, the genuine sentiment of
this love. Protestant individualism, in impelling the
mind to scepticism, gradually destroys charity together
with faith ; benevolence withers away as the light of
iruthbecomes extinguished L This is the grand cause
to which all others are subordinate. But this general
explanation leaves another question to be solved.
As this degradation manifested itself from the com-
mencement of the reformation, it remains to inquire
which, among the articles rejected by ancient
Protestantism, is that whose destruction has specially
contributed to alter, and extinguish that glowing
christian charity which characterizes Catholicism.
Ask the Church by what means she daily excites,
revives, and nourishes this wonderful sentiment ?
Her only response will be, to point to the inscription
which crowns the mysterious tabernacle; ilIt is thus
God lias loved the world." When love is to be
explained, whom will you believe, if not those
who love.

To comprehend in its full extent the action of this
principle of love, we should call to mind how it raises

H

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to a superior degree of sanctity the duties of primitive
beneficence, whilst it nourishes at the same time that
spirit of sacrifice which is the peculiar character of
Christianity. Charity does not enter into the human
heart without a struggle, for there it finds an eternal
opponent — pride, the first born of egotism, and the
parent of hatred. The contempt of man for his
fellow man produced the cruel theories of slavery,
which existed among the degenerate nations of
antiquity. But as soon as Christianity had stamped
on the brow of all the seal of an august
fraternity with him who is at the same time
both man and God, these theories quickly disap-
peared. Nevertheless, as in reviving the sentiment
of the dignity of human nature, it respected, in the
inequality of conditions, one of the elements of
our present social state, pride, abusing this
necessary order for the purpose of re assuming
some at least of its former enjoyments, endeavours
to create a petty slavery even under the empire of
love. The insolent disdain so often manifested for
the poor, and the harsh treatment of servants, furnish
the proof. But, as in raising human nature to a

THE EUCHARIST.

115

union with the Divinity ; Christ broke the degrading
yoke that had so long pressed upon it, so by imparting
himself to man in the holy communion, which in
a certain sense deifies the Christian, he perpetually
combats in our morals the very shadow of that ancient
barbarism which still lingers among us. Never,
indeed, did the dogma of fraternal equality receive
a more sacred sanction. Its most expressive sign,
consecrated by universal custom, is a participation
of the same repast. Here, the great and the humble,
the young and the old, the rich and the destitute,
come together to the same table, as to a family feast,
and this feast is— God himself. The beggar, who this
evening is at your gate, on to-morrow will place
himself by your side at the banquet of eternal life.
Know you whence comes this poor servant who
suffers so much from your imperious temper ? He
enters your house amid the reverence of angels ; for
he bears within him the God who shall judge you.
Whoever will closely observe the character of the
Christian nations will easily recognise this secret,
but constant action, of faith in the real presence.
It is to it we owe, at least in part, one of the most

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beautiful traits of our manners :— the dignity of the
servant, the notion and sentiment of which, some
nations, particularly England and Geneva, would
seem to have lost.

The poor man is a superior being in Christianity.
His eminent dignity is one of the first articles of the
symbol of charity. We blindly disdain his apparent
lowliness : but what state more lowly, what more
obscure, what comes nearer to annihilation, than
that in which Jesus Christ presents himself to us ?
He who has said "This is my body, this is my blood"
has also said " As long as you did it to one of these
my least brethren you did it to me."* If our faith
be not lively enough to recognise, under the rags
of misery, the representation of the Prince of the
future world, how shall it adore, under the
meanest emblem, the majesty of the Master of the
universe ? Each mark of contempt towards the poor
contains a principle of infidelity and the germ of
blasphemy. Let us penetrate more deeply the great
mystery of faith : communion, unaccompanied by

* Amen dico vobis : quamdiu fecistis uni ex fratribns meis
minimis, mihi fecistis — St, Matt, xxv. v. 40.

THE EUCHARIST.

117

works of charity, would be like an unpropitious
sacrifice interrupted by crime, a sacrifice without a
thanksgiving. Offered up in the temple, it is termi-
nated in the hovel of the poor, for there too dwells
the Son of Man. The hymn of Mercy is the comple-
tion of the rite. These pious considerations, familiar to
the faithful, daily produce acts of beneficence, that
outnumber all the phrases of philosophers on the
subject. Do you refuse to recognise the force of
these sentiments, because they bear the impress of
mysticism ? But is not the marvellous influence
which Christianity has exercised throughout the
universe connected with ideas of the same order.
What are the boasted achievements of rational
beneficence, when contrasted for a moment with this
mystic charity, which, during eighteen hundred
years, holding its vigil above suffering humanity,
affectionately turns its bed of sorrow ? Ascend as
high as you please into the regions of antiquity, and
its records will inform you that all beneficent doctrines
are based on mysticism. Viewed in this light
mysticism has governed the world : its power dates
from creation.

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GEXLBET ON

The benignant influence of the mysteries of love
is particularly manifested in the pardon of injuries,
that other miracle of Christianity. If, thanks to the
healing art, the eye of man seeks the science of
organization even in the bosom of death, why should
we not find means for presenting to the eyes of
the infidel the Christian soul, that he may there
behold the organization of living charity ? Let those
who have experienced the troubles, and the remedies
by which its tranquillity is restored, bear testimony
to it. When the fire of revenge, raging in the
inferior appetite, threatens to inflame the will, some
drops of the blood of the Man- God extinguish it in
its birth. I do not believe that any man who com-
municates with the necessary dispositions, if he
should happen to discover, at that divine instant,
even a shade of hatred until then latent in his heart,
could endure the aspect of it. In addition to the
authority of duty, so powerful at such a moment,
and the voice of that blood which cries aloud for
pardon, the state of the soul is then imperviable to
any sentiment of hatred. There is within her too
sweet a peace. The infidel can form no idea of

THE EUCHARIST.

119

this order of sentiments ; but at least let him not
blaspheme what he does not know, for indeed his
doctrine will produce nothing similar. The precept
which ordains the pardon of inj uries,is the great mystery
of Christian morality, as redemption is the great
mystery of faith. All human metaphysics are
essentially inadequate, I do not say to procure the
accomplishment of this duty, but even simply to prove
that it is a duty. The heart of man feels that to
pardon is noble ? Granted, but does it not also feel
that there is a grandeur in an undying vengeance ?
Where will you find in mere sentiment the
obligation of preferring one emotion to the other ?
Do you appeal to reason ? unaided by faith, reason
tells you that vengeance is but the exercise of the right
of self defence. In vain will you torment yourself
with the abstractions of idiology : the duty of
pardoning injuries will ever remain a consequence
without a principle. It is an inference that can be
drawn from Christian principles alone. When the
wisdom of antiquity had the boldness to counsel
this virtue, it connected it with ideas of divine
pardon which constituted the basis of the primitive

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religion. On this subject the genius of all antiquity
is imaged in the beautiful allegory of Homer " The
gods who are our superiors in virtue, rank, and
power, suffer themselves to be touched by compassion.
When men offend them by their crimes, they avert the
anger of these superior beings, by offering them with
humble prayer, incense, vows, libations, andsacrifices,
' '•''Prayer •$ are the daughters of the great Jupiter "
walking with a faultering step, — a furrowed brow,— *
downcast eye — and sidelong glances, they constantly
follow Injury, which, with a bold and light step,
easily precedes them, and pervades the earth in its
course of ruin. They come to repair the wrong which
it has done. These daughters of Jupiter are bountiful
to him who respectfully receives them, and they gra-
ciously hear his petitions. If any person obstinately
repel, or reject them, they supplicate Jupiter to send
him Injury, that he may suffer condign punishment. "*
Attend now to the Catholic doctrine. The pardon,
which drew its being from the cross and which dwells
in the tabernacle, waits not till prayer, with a down-
cast eye, comes to blot out the traces of the
* Iliad, chap. ix.

THE EUCHAHIST.

121

offence. As the God-Saviour opens his arms to
guilty mortals, and makes the first advance to heal
the wounds which in offending him they have inflicted
on themselves : thus Pardon, the first born of Christ,
and like him every where present, precedes the tardy
supplications of repentance, and hastens to offer itself
to the wrong-doer. Eternal as his Father, he
embraces all ages, for him there is neither yesterday,
nor to-morrow : yet in favour of man he has his
days of benediction and his hours of grace. When
the congregation of the devout assemble for the
sacrifice at which the libation of the redeeming blood
is made, he watches at the door of the temple, and
says to all who enter, " If therefore thou offer thy
gift at the altar, and there thou remember that thy
brother hath any thing against thee, leave there thy
offering before the altar, and go first tobe reconciled to
thy brother, and then coming thou shalt offer thy gift. ' ' *
All those who bring a fraternal heart enter with joy,

* Si ergo offers munus tuum ad altare, et ibi recordatus
fueris quia frater tuus habet aliquid adversum te, relinque ibi
munus tuum ante altare, etvade prius reconciliarifratri tuo, et
time veniens offeres munus tuum. St, Matt. cap. v., v. 23, 24

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for they bring the grateful offering ; and, when they
depart thence to their abode, he says to them ; Go in
peace. But if, deceiving his vigilance, some of these
false brethren, who secretly sacrifice to Hatred, the
queen of hell, dare to advance where love only is
admitted, he awaits them at their return. When they
pass before him, with a gloomy brow and a heavy
heart, he gives them remorse, as a brother, who
pursues their steps every where. They are condemned
to his scathing embraces. Who shall tell the pangs
by which they are tortured ? We only know that
a terrible sentence is recorded, in their own
breasts, by all the blood which has redeemed the
world.

The eucharistic worship, which is the exterior and
perpetual realization of an infinite devotedness, which
by daily awakening it, nourishes with this sentiment,
the memory, the heart, and even the senses of
man, penetrates his entire being with the spirit of
sacrifice. Self devotedness becomes an habitual
sentiment. It is this which gives to charity perse-
verance and activity. For nothing can supersede
the force of habit, and the heart, as well as the body,

THE EUCHARIST.

123

has its habits. This action of the principle of love
displays itself throughout the history of Christianity,
and presents to the observant eye a magnificient
experience. \Ye collect with a scrupulous curiosity
the most minute details connected with the lives of
celebrated authors : and very justly, for they are the
notes of the history of genius. But how much nobler
the subject, hi as much as it is more closely linked
with the happiness of humanity, to seek in the life,
the words, and confidential outpourings of these
wonder-workers of charity produced by Catholicism,
the secret of their incomparable devotedness. There
it may be seen that, if the devotedness of Jesus
Christ was its source, the communion of his body
and of his blood was its daily nourishment, its
remedy against the langour of nature, its vital
principle which continually caused the pulse of
charity to throb more quickly in the human heart.
We shall give an illustration. The period comprised
in the latter half of the sixteenth and the first half
of the seventeenth century, beheld Francis Xavier,
Francis of Sales, and Vincent of Paul, names every
where in benediction, and which even humility

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could not preserve from glory. This triumvirate,
composed of different characters, is christian charity
personified under its different attributes. Worn out
by sacrifice, oppressed beneath the weight of the
world he was converting, the heroic Apostle of the
East, forgetting his fatigues, his sufferings and
continual dangers, exclaims. " The severest pang
of the missionary, is not to be able, in certain cir-
cumstances, to celebrate the holy mysteries, and to
be deprived of the Celestial bread which invigorates
the human heart, and which is its only consolation
amid the evils and contradictions of this life." *
Let us now hear the angel of meekness : in tracing
with an admirable naivete the wonders that com-
munion effects in the saints, he did not reflect that
he was pourtraying himself. "They feel, says
he, that Jesus Christ pervades their entire being.
But what does the Saviour effect by this pervading
influence? He purifies all, mortifies all, reforms
all, causes the heart to glow with affection,
gives light to the understanding, imparts new
vigour to the breast, beams from the eyes,
* Letters of St. Francis of Xavier, Liv, cviii, anno 1552.

THE EUCHARIST.

125

speaks with the tongue ; he becomes all in all:
and then " we live, not we, but Jesus Christ
liveth in us." * Would you wish now to learn
from the mouth of Vincent of Paul what com-
munion is ? " When you have received the adorable
body of Jesus Christ, do ,you not feel, said he to
his priests, do you not feel, the divine fire burning
in your breast " ? f If, condemned to the galleys
by human justice, in some reverie of fancy,
I imagined that a perfect stranger, impelled by
some unaccountable love for me, had come to take
upon him my chains ; for the realization of such a
day-dream, I must confess I would trust a little more
to the fire which burned within the breast ofVincent
of Paul, than to all the lights of philantrophy.

The philosophers who admire Catholic devotedness,
resemble the Egyptians who bless the inundations of
the Nile, whose source they know not "Perhaps
there is nothing more noble, says Voltaire, than the

* Spiritual letters of St. Francis of Sales, liv. ii. cap. 48 —
Lyons 1634.

f Life of St.' Yincent of Paul. By Louis Abelly, Tom. iii.
p. 183.

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sacrifice made by a delicate sex of beauty, youth, and
frequently of high rank, to relieve that aggregate of
human misery collected in our hospitals, the very
sight of which is so humiliating to our pride and so
revolting to our delicacy."* The truth of this obser-
vation is undeniable ; but why not proceed to an
explanation of the cause ? Do you imagine that these
retreats are inaccessible to the storms of the moral
world *? that the human heart, which even pleasure
fatigues, never sinks under sacrifice ? When in the
midst of these gloomy apartments, it cannot but occur
to those devoted beings as they bend above the un-
known sufferer that, instead of the brilliant society and
the fond family which they left, and to whose delights a
single word would restore them, they must bind up
the wounds of strangers, listen to the shrieks of agony,
and follow to the tomb the friendless corpse, not for
a week, or a month, but for years — for ever : think
you that their courage is never shaken at the sight of
such a gloomy future ? What then, it may be asked,
sustains them in their weakness or preserves them
from its influence? You know not: imitate the
* Vide Essay on Morals, c. 139.

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127

example of those who wished to know it — interrogate
themselves. Frequent communion, such is their
unanimous response. But a truce to words : what
will you give them in place of this mystery of love ?
If their devotedness is the very perfection of moral
grandeur, why do you not undertake so glorious a
work? Create for us, with your pompous maxims
of beneficence, one Sister of Charity for a proof, only
one* we ask no more.

These reflections lead to a painful thought. Do
these men who, since an ever to be deplored schism,
are engaged by profession in combatting the faith of
the Church, know what they are doing? Do they
know that they are attacking a belief the most pro-
ductive of every sort of beneficence, as it is that
which supports in every part of the universe the spirit
of devotedness and sacrifice ? May he who was
meek and humble of heart, dispite of the haughty
ingratitude of those whom he came to save, avert
from our heart and lips every sentiment and expres-
sion of bitterness against those unhappy scorners of
the most magnificent of his gifts. And how could
we speak to them otherwise than with the language

* Yide Appendix.

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of love ! If this language existed not, it should be
invented when speaking of the Eucharist. But at
the same time a sorrow, rendered indignant at
witnessing its deplorable effects, urges us to raise our
voice against their unhallowed ministry. Deeply-
penetrated with this two-fold sentiment, we would
not know how to express the mingled emotions of
love and sorrow we feel for them, if we did not call
to mind that word of Christ to the first despiser of
the mystery of faith, that word so affectionate
and so overwhelming. Friend whereto art thou
come.*

* Amice, ad quid venisti? St Math. Chap. xxvi. v. 50.

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129

CHAPTER VIIL
The Interior Life.

The mystical life is a moral phenomenon of all
ages. The various religious treatises of antiquity
contain theories of spirituality, which comprise the
basis of this order of ideas, as it has been understood
by all modern nations. But these theories are divi-
ded into two clases which are diametrically opposed.
The one, founded on purely philosiphical specula-
tions, and principally on pantheism, tended to destroy
the active principle in each man, that, by annihilating
whatever is peculiar to the individual, he may be
blended with the universal soul, and thus become
absorbed in the Divinity. Diffused among a crowd

of the oriental sects ; this doctrine appears to have
i

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originally come from India, and will be found
developed together with the principle on which it is
based and its demoralizing consequences, in one of
the most ancient monuments of sanscrite literature.
"He who knows" to use the language of Oupneck-hat,
"that all things are the type of the Creator, that
one's self and whatever appears to exist is the
Creator; that the world proceeds from him, that
he is the world, that it exists in him and returns to
him ; he who knows this and meditates on it, finds
therein the repose of his soul; he is in peace.
When the heart has renounced its desires and actions,
it then directly tends to its principle, which is the
universal soul ; when it tends to its principle, it has
no other will than that of the true being. It is the
nature of the heart to be changed into what it
desires; thus the soul becomes God or the world,
according as its aspirations are directed to the
one or the other. The impure heart is that
which has its desires ; the pure, that which
is divested of them. The heart absorbed in the
perfect being by reflecting that the universal soul
exists, becomes that soul, and then its happiness is

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131

ineffable : it knows that this soul resides within it.
To be absorbed in God, as in a treasure that one has
found, to affirm nothing, to propose nothing, to say
nothing : either I or me ; to he without fear and
without desire, such is the mark of salvation, and
of supreme happiness. To desire, is to die ; not to
desire, is to live. Whoever knows the universal being,
whoever knows that his soul is the universal soul,
becomes light; he is freed from all evil; he is lear-
ned without tiresome study; he is happy, he is
immortal, he is God. The desire to do a pure work,
the apprehension to do abad one, trouble not the wise ;
for he knows that both the pure and bad works
are God himself (who acts.) The truth is there
is neither production, decay, nor resurrection?
neither contemplative, saved, nor salvation: for
the world is but a phantom ; there is nothing real
but the universal soul which shews itself under the
appearance of the world." *

Though clad in the garb of enthusiasm, this doc-
trine presents a series of consequences, rigorously

*Vide Analysis of Oupneck-hat, by M. Lauguinais. Anquetil
Duperron's latin translation may be also consulted.

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deduced from pantheism. Errors analogous, in
many respects, to this imaginary mysticism which
dates an origin of three thousand years, have repro-
duced themselves, at different periods, in the bosom
of Christianity, though by an inverse order. For,
whilst the Indian quietists derived their theories of
spirituality from pantheism, the European quietists,
grounding themselves on a mistaken notion of perfec-
tion, established, maxims that logically tended to
the same point from which the others had set out.
Their doctrine on the necessity of annihilating all
individual operation of the understanding and of the
will, cannot otherwise be conceived, than by
supposing man to be a modification of the infinite
substance: for if he be an intelligent creature distinct
from God, as such he must be active ; matter alone
being inert; and further as a distinct intelligent being,
he ought to enjoy an activity proper to himself.
Thus many of those mystics, drawing from their
system of unification the same consequences as the
ancients, derived from it also, like them, the indiffe-
rence of all actions, and absolute impeccability,
identifying, in the same way, the will of man with

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133

the will of God, the limited being with the
infinite. Molinos, by the tendency of his system
impelled to pantheism, announces it in terms so
similar to those of Oupneck-hat, that one would
be inclined to suspect, that the quietism of the
seventeenth century was, like so many other
systems, but the revival of the oriental doctrines.

The principle that contains this great error lurks
in the writings, meritorious in other points, of some
ascetic authors, who, being persons of true piety,
would have rejected it had they perceived its
consequences. The devotion they inculcate, instead
of regulating the activity of the soul, tends only to
weaken and destroy it. The germ of all pantheistical
quietism is contained in this mistaken notion, as far
remote from genuine catholic devotion, such as it
has been understood in all ages, as being is from
nonentity. Notwithstanding this error, these ancient
sages who may be denominated, according to many
of the holy Fathers, as the primitive christians, often
gave admirable precepts of spirituality. Derived
from traditionary faith, their theories, instead of
destroying the active principle, aimed at its deve-

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lopement, exciting man to perfect within himself, by
a continual purification of his heart, the living image
of the Deity. Such is also, but in a degree neces-
sarily superior, the spirituality consecrated by
Christianity fully developed. It dilates and fertilizes
the soul, as quietism paralizes it by a mortal lethargy,
for it substitutes for this passive pleasure, which
constitutes the essence of false mystisism, the active
principle — love, which is to the moral, what fire, its
ancient emblem is to the physical world — the
universal stimulant. It may be interesting to con-
trast with the pantheistical mysticism of Oupneck-
hat the description of catholic devotion, given by an
unknown author of a book translated almost into every
language, the genuine christian Oupneck-hat, that
contains the pure essence of the religion of love.

" Love is an excellent thing, a great good indeed :
what alone maketh light all that is burthensome,
and equally bears all that is unequal. For it carries
a burthen without being burthened, and makes all
that which is bitter, sweet and savoury. The love
of Jesus is noble and generous, it spurs us on to do
great things, and excites us to desire always that

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135

which is most perfect. Love will tend upwards, and
is not to be detained by things on earth. Love will
be at liberty, and free from all wordly affection, lest
its interior sight be hindered, lest it suffer itself to
be entangled with any temporal interest, or cast
down by losses. Nothing is sweeter than love ;
nothing stronger, nothing higher, nothing more
generous, nothing more pleasant, nothing fuller or
better in heaven or earth : for love proceeds from
God, and cannot rest but in God, above all things
created. The lover flies, runs, and rejoices ; he is
free and not held. He gives all for all, and has all
in all : because he rests in one sovereign good above
all, from whom all good flows and proceeds. He
looks not at the gifts, but turns himself to the Giver
above all goods. Love often knows no measure, but
is inflamed above measure. Love feels no burthen,
values no labours, would willingly do more than it can ;
complains not of impossibility, because it conceives
that it may, and can do all things. It is able there-
fore to do anything, and it performs and effects many
things ; where he that loves not, faints and lies
town. Love watches, and sleeping, slumbers not,

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When weary, is not tired ; when straitened, is not
constrained ; when frighted, is not disturbed ; but
like a lively name, and a torch all on fire, it mounts
upwards ; and securely passes through all opposition.
Whosoever loveth, knoweth the cry of this voice.
Whosoever is not ready to suffer all things, and to
stand resigned to the will of his Beloved, is not
worthy to be called a lover. He that loveth, must
willingly embrace all that is hard and bitter, for the
sake of his Beloved, and never suffer himself to be
turned away from him by any contrary occurrences
whatsoever." *

This active christian devotion, which nothing
wearies, and that pantheistical insensibility, which
nothing can excite, are the forms, the latter of
egotism that destroys, the former of the spirit of
sacrifice which is the conservative principle of the
moral order. For quietism, which would appear to
aim at the annihilation of self, tends, on the con-
trary, to constitute it the centre of all things, and is
at best but the ambition of a boundless egotism.
On the contrary, in developing the activity of every
* Imitation of Christ, Liv. iii, c. 5.

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137

individual, love, that lives only to embrace all,
associates man to the action of the infinite being,
emphatically so called — namely, the gift — and the
sacrifice of self.

However, as error has no innate principle of
support, pantheistical mysticism includes a great
truth. The absorption of man in God is but the
corruption, of a primitive and eternal dogma — the
union of God and man. In this point of view,
there is something hi the system which responds to
the wants of human nature. It aspires to this union,
it endeavours to free itself from the bonds which
bind it to what is changeable and perishable, that it
may cleave to the immutable reality, for it feels that
there alone is to be found the repose of pure liberty.
So far is Catholicism from refusing to recognise these
wants, that her consoling truths serve only to nourish
and satisfy them. In promising man that one day,
without divesting himself of his nature, he shall
become one with God, it imparts to him, in this terres-
trial union , the foretaste of a future imion. The nature
of this union is such, that in order to express it,
it employs terms similar to those of the pantheistical

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system, and to which usage alone, regulated accor-
ding to the explanations of a severe orthodoxy, has
attached a sense formally exclusive of that great
error. It teaches that God, by communion, so
imparts himself to us, that the substance of Christ
is mingled with our substance to make of him and us
but one ; * that the result of this communion, is not
merely a union of will, but of nature ; f and that we

* Initiati dictis obsequantur, ut non solum per dilectionem,
sed etiam reipsa, cum ilia came commisceamur; id quod
efficitur per cibum quern ille dedit, volens nobis ostendere
quanto erganos ferveat amore. Propterea se nobis commiscuit
et in unum corpus totum constituit, ut unum simus, quasi
corpus junctum capiti. St. Joames chris. horn. 46 in Matth.

f Est ergo innobis ipse per carnem, et sumus, in eo, dum
secundum hoc quod nos sumus in Deo est. Quam autem
in co per sacramentum communicat se carnis et sanguinis
simus, ipse testatur, dicens : et hie mundus me jam non
videt; vos autem me videtis, quoniam, ego vivo et vos
vivitis ; quoniam ego in Patre meo, et vos in me, et ego in
vobis. Si voluntatis tantum unitatem intelligi vellet, cur
gradum quemdam atque ordinem consummandee unitatis expo-
suit ; nisi, ut cum ille in Patre per naturam divinitatis esset,
nos contra in co per corporalem ejus nativitatem, et ille rursus
in vobis per sacramentorum inesse mysterium crederetur ? ac
si perfecta per Mediatorem unitas doceretur, cum nobis in se
manentibus ipse maneret in Patre, et in Patre manens maneret
in nobis, et ita ad unitatem Patris proficeremus : cum qui in
co naturalitur secundum nativitatum inest, nos quoque in co
naturaliter inessemus, ipso in nobis naturaliter permanente.
St. Hil. de Trin. Lib. viii, No. 13

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139

are identified with him. * To express this unity,
catholic faith does a happy violence to language, by
imposing upon it an extraordinary syntax ; the noble
antithesis of " Saint Paul, I live, no not I," is emi-
nently expressive of the eucharistic transformation.
Catholocism also teaches that, as Christ gives
himself to us by love, this union cannot be accom-
plished but in as much as through love we make
him the offering of ourselves, and thus it eradicates
the deep-rooted egotism of the pantheist. Two
opposite systems of error have respectively failed to
recognise an essential portion of human nature,
viewed in relation to the point of which we now
treat ; the one, whose germ is found in the stoical
notions, and which has been, by modern Jancenism
and quietism, connected with other ideas, commands
man to love G-od, even in the supposition that he
shall be eternally separated from him : it condemns

* Quern ad modum enim si quis ceram cerse conjunnerit,
utique alteram in altera invicemque imineasse videbit : eodurn
quoque opinor modo, qui Salvatoris nostri Christi carnern
sumit, sec ejus pretiosum sanguinem bibit, ut ipse ait, unum
quiddarn cum eo reperitur. St Cyrii, In ev, St Joannes, c. 5,
v, 56.

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him to a hopeless and endless activity. The other,
confounding man with God, and thereby concentrating
all his energies in self destroys the principle of activity
by destroying love. Catholocism combines the truths
hidden in these contradictory errors. Uniting the
want which impels us to look to God for peace and
happiness, so essential to our nature, with that
other want of activity by which alone nature is
perfected, it corresponds at the same time to both,
for it makes love, which is essentially active, the
medium of a union with God. The reciprocal gift
of God and Man, responding to each other — behold
catholocism unveiled. This is the source — this the
centre of every thing.

The love of man for God, such as Christianity
has infused into the mind and heart, is a wonder
which we cannot sufficiently admire. Its universality
makes it appear natural, and yet it is nothing less
than the result of a most profound and intimate
change in our moral constitution. The human race,
agitated a long time by the recollection of its fall,
passed through the ordeal of a salutary fear to the de-
lights of perfect love, in the same way as a man bowed

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141

beneath the weight of crime arises the beloved of God.
We cannot go from one extreme to the other but by
regular grades of transition. The sentiment which,
according to the laws of the human heart, should
first develop itself in sinful man is that of terror.
But terror would immediately beget despair, if hope-
did not at once present herself with a redeeming look,
and sweetly lead him to the bosom of love. Such is
the history of mankind ; for Providence governs the
human family as an individual. Two sentiments
divided the guilty heart of the children of Adam
with regard to the God of holiness ; the fear of
approaching him and the desire of being familiarly
united to him. In the primitive religion, fear was the
predominant sentiment. So deeply impressed was
the worship of antiquity with it, that, when atheism
endeavoured to explain the origin of religion, its first
hypothesis was that fear had made the gods.* Not
that hope bad ever abandoned the earth. A promise
had been made our first parents, which caused all
antiquity to proclaim, with the ancient sages of
China, that when innocence perished, mercy
* Primus in orlre Deos fecit timor.

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appeared. * Nevertheless the original anathema, so
vividly represented to the imagination by the show
of those terrible rites that constituted the universal
liturgy ; made a deeper impression than that
mysterious salvation, but dimly seen through the
shadows of futurity. From this unquiet and troubled
hope there arose, after a struggle a love tremulous
as itself, and, during forty centuries, the heart of
fallen man appeared more susceptible of fear than of
confidence. The Gospel has, in the full force of the
term, wrought a revolution in the human soul, by
effecting a change in relation to the two sentiments
that divided it : fear has ceded to love the empire of
the heart. The God of gods having abased himself
to such a degree as to become our friend, f our
br other, % our servant, § fallen humanity immediately

* Chinese Memoirs, Tom. 1, p. 108.

f Jam non dicam vos servos, quia servus neseit quid faciat
dominus ejus. Vos autem dixi amicos quia omnia qucecumque
audavi a Patre meo nota feci vobis. — St. Joannes, ch. xv. v. 15.

% Non confunditur fratres eos vocare. — Ep. ad. Heb. c. ii.
v. ii.

§ Filius hominis non venit ministrari sed ministrare.— St.
Matt. chap. xx.3 v. 28.

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143

raised itself to a sort of familiarity with the Omnipo-
tent, the idea of which was utterly unknown to the
ancients, and which they would have deemed nothing
less than sacrilege. This is the genuine and
distinctive mark of Christian nations when com-
pared with others : but they do not all partake of it
in the same degree. This sentiment has been
visibly weakened among Protestants. And hence
it is they deem the free and cheerful piety of Catholics
an irreverence to the Deity. What is considered by
them religious respect, is but a cold and gloomy
reserve, which makes Christian piety retrogade
towards the imperfection of the law of fear. Too many
recollections of Sinai mingle with their worship of
Calvary. If the difference which exists on this point
between the ancients and modems proceed from
the familiarity established by Christ between man
and God, the difference that exists between Catholic
devotion and the frigid worship of Protestants is
necessarily derived from an analogous principle, and
supposes that Catholics are more familiarized with
Christ himself. This indeed is the result of faith
in the real presence or permanent incarnation which

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draws us to Christ, as the incarnation itself made
us approximate more closely to God. It is no longer
to humanity in general, but to each human being that
the Word unites itself. It not only enters into the
limits of our common nature, but even into those
of our personality : it in some measure deifies our
essence, and christianises the selfish principle The
union which changes food into the substance of
the body it nourishes, is the emblem of this incar-
nation in us. To seek a more intimate union would
be to desire to be the man-God. Who does not
perceive that a worship founded on such a mystery,
must raise to the highest possible degree this
sentiment of familiarity with God whch is the
basis of Christianity ? In our admirable prayers for
communion, the soul speaks to Jesus, as the spouse
to her well beloved, and fear to her is but the
modesty of confidence.

To form a correct idea of this mystery, viewed in
this light, we must consider the order in which love
is developed. It does not shew itself in a created
being, till a superior being has lowered itself for the
purpose of manifesting this sentiment to it. Such

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145

is the invariable, the universal law, of which the
idea is admirably expressed in those languages, in
which the words,propensity and inclination are deemed
synonimous with love. The child learns to love as
he learns to speak. The tenderness of his parents
awakens in his soul, as yet alive only to physical
sensation, a superior order of affections till then
unknown : his heart begins to throb at the smile of
his mother. The general usage which obliges, in the
conjugal state, man, or the strong being, first to
manifest his love, originates in the same law which
is not less visible in civil society. Fear is the first
sentiment which power inspires. Should it desire
love, it must commence by loving. This sentiment,
like that of truth, is propagated from the high to the
low, and this order which governs the present world,
is equally developed in a more elevated sphere.
Faith shews us numerous choirs of intelligent crea-
tures, which lowering themselves towards us, antici-
pate our friendship by a celestial friendship, and
which in admirable gradation form an immense
hierarchy of love. It might be said that creation
rests on an inclined plane, so that all creatures

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appear to incline towards those beneath in order to
love and to be loved by them, thus passing from
one to the other, and as it were from hand to hand,
down to the lowest rank — that flaming torch kindled
in the highest heaven, and caught from the bosom of
eternal love. The Apostle of charity, soaring on eagle
wing to the first cause of this universal law, exclaims,
Let us love God, for he has loved us first.* He by
whom all things were made : the Word of God, in
creating myriads of intelligent beings, originally
manifested to them his love under forms analogous
to their nature, and consequently as various as the
modifications of their being. By the very act of thus
lowering himself to them, he must necessarily have
appeared in a state of abasement, under a form of
existence inferior to that which he has in the bosom
of the Father. Thus, according to the philosophy
of antiquity, creation was considered a sort of
annihilation of the Divinity, as the beginning of a
sacrifice whereof God himself was the victim. But
follow up the progress of this divine abasement,

* Diligamus Deum, quoniam, Deus prior delexit nos —
Ep. St. Joannes, Cap. iv., v. 19.

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147

whose boundless plan was marked out from all eter-
nity by love itself. He whom God begat before the
morning star, * who is the splendour of his glory,
the figure of his substance, t in descending from
his bosom, passed over the various orders of creation
to arrive at the most remote region of intellectual life,
at the extreme point where spiritual life ends, and
blind existence commences. There he found man,
who is kindred alike to angels and to brutes ;
Sthe shadow of a Deity in the body of an animal. And
the word was made flesh. Could he humble himself
still more after having entered so deeply into the
narrow proportions of a creature below whom no
intelligent beings are found? His love desired a still
more profound abasement. The God who concealed
himself under the magnificent veil of nature, who
shrouded himself in the obscure veil of humanity,
entombs himself under the appearance of lowly
matter, to be like it the food of man. There all
disappears, even his human form : he is as if he were

* Ex utero ante luceferurn genui te. — PsaL cix.
f Splendor cloriae et %ura substantia ejus, — Cap. ad Heb.
c. 1, v. 3.

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not, and, arrived at the ultimate point of abasement;,
he sinks into the bottomless abyss of our miseries.
For each degree of divine abasement, there is a
divine developement of human nature : the latter
ascending in love to God, in proportion as the former
descends by charity to man. The ancient doxology
to the good and great God, is the summary of the
piety of the first times, but when he who governs us
had become the Emanuel, the God whose greatness
as Bossuet remarks is founded more on goodness than
on power, he created in man a new heart. The
sentiment of his love was more vivid than the recol-
lection of his majesty, and Christianity, in preserving
the sublimity of ancient language to describe the
formidable power of him who is, has added nothing
thereto, whilst it has formed with the elements
of primitive language an idiom specially consecrated
to the use of love. In this language taught by the
Gospel, faith in the Eucharist has formed a magnifi-
cent and tender dialect, the exclusive property of the
Catholic Church. Its type is found in a fragment
of holy writ, bearing a peculiar character, namely,
the Canticle of Canticles. As the Apocalypse which

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149

exhibits to us the sublime figure of justice driving,
from age to age, iniquity towards the abyss, forms
by its terrific imagery a striking contrast with the
serenity of the Gospel of mercy, so the Song of
Solomon exhibits a difference not less remarkable
with the austere majesty of the old Testament. It
was the prophecy of a mystery of love which time
was to unveil : and justly might it be called the
Apocalypse of Christian charity. When Jesus Christ
had consummated the mystery, the seals of this book
were broken, its language understood, and its most
impassioned figures naturally presented themselves
to the pen of Catholic writers, as often as they
endeavoured to express the ineffable nuptials which
are accomplished in the communion. Protestant
authors make comparatively little use of this sacred
epithalamium, which appears to them a collection of
hieroglyphics of which the key is lost.

The difference between Catholicism and Protestant
piety is marked in their prayers. Prayer is the
accent of religion : it exhibits its heart, as the
human voice reflects the shades of thought and
feeling. The supplications of the ancient world were

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the cry of a great misery to a great mercy. But with
the prayer which we have learned from the lips of
the Saviour a new order commenced. The Christian
exposes his necessities to God : but it is not with
these he begins : he first of all supplicates God on
account of God himself. He desires that his name
of Almighty Father, the principal and only cause
of all that is, may be every where known and
adored ; that his reign, the reign of his Word, the
eternal King of the spiritual world, may come ;
that heaven and earth, subject to his holy will,
may be the sanctuary of his Spirit of love.
It is only then, the Christian begins to suppli-
cate for himself. In three words, he embraces all
the wants of the present, past, and future — this,
three-fold existence — the passing eternity of the
creature. The present wants but a little bread, the
bread of our indigence, according to the Syriac
version, the material emblem of that food which is
the super substantial aliment * which alone appeases
the hunger of the soul. The past has nothing to

* Panem nostrum supersubstantialem da nobis hodic. —
Vulg. St. Matt. cap. vi., v. 2.

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151

ask for, save pardon, and to obtain it, the Christian
wast pardon. In the future^ has nothing to fear
but himself. His prayer concludes like the universal
petition of all ages and nations; for deliverance
from evil in the design of infinite goodness,
is the end of our creation. Though admirable
in eveiy word, the Lord's prayer is particularly
distinguished from the forms of supplication inspired
by the primitive religion, in this particular that
the disciple of Christ, more occupied in his
prayer with God than with himself, does not cry
out with afflicted humanity, peace to men, until
he has chaunted with the angels, Glory to God !
Compare the Catholic and Protestant prayers
with this divine model, and, that the terms of
comparison may be just, commence by retrenching
from the last the prayers literally borrowed
from the Catholic liturgy or formed on them ;
there is no sincere Protestant who will not be
impressed by the difference. However gross the
prejudices that intervene, genuine devotion, whose
ear is ever delicate, cannot fail to distinguish the
true from the false accents of supplication. Whence

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is it that so many Protestants envy the unction of
Catholic prayers which sheds so much sweetness
even on the sentiment of our wants, and lends to
repentance almost the charm of innocence ? Faith in
the Eucharist, which, at every moment, powerfully
excites confidence, love and the spirit of sacrifice
constantly upholds prayer in the degree of perfection
to which it has been raised by Christianity, whilst
wherever this faith is altered or rejected, prayer
necessarily retrogades towards its primitive imper-
fection, a thing no longer tolerable, for, under the
empire of religion fully developed, it is a grating
discord, which disturbs the harmony of the whole.
A striking comparison will serve to illustrate these
observations. The Lutheran belief in the Eucharist
is that which differs least from the Catholic, which
latter has been entirely rejected by the Calvinists.
The English system, though Calvinistic at
bottom, oscilates between Wittenburg and Geneva,
inasmuch as according to Burnet, it considers as
indifferent the dogma of the corporal presence, so
strenuously maintained, for the moment of commu-
nion, by the primitive Lutherans, but rejected with

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153

such horror, as an impious tenet, by the fanaticism of
the ancient Calvinists. Now it has been remarked that
Lutheranism, notwithstanding the ferocious temper
of its founder, presented from its very origin a milder
character, in point of piety, when contrasted with the
repulsive harshness of Calvinism though established
by a man less violent. The character of the English
system is intermediate : the Calvinists think it too
devout ; the Lutherans, not sufficiently so. Hence
the three principal fractions of Protestantism are
distinguished by a corresponding relation to piety,
as they recede from or approximate to the generative
dogma of Catholic piety. I am far from sup-
posing that the peculiar character of each of
these sects has been determined by this cause alone ;
but hi order to account for the phenomenon,
it should not be forgotten that the moral, as
well as the physical world, has its affinities
and combinations. This law, which may be
demonstrated by the history of many ancient sects,*
shewed itself in Jansenism, the last of modern
heresies. One of the first effects of its anti-social
* Vide Appendix.

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doctrine was to estrange from communion. The
stern controvertist, who contended to the last for
the rarity of grace, was naturally impelled by his
sombre logic to publish the manifesto of his sect
against frequent communion. Impervious to the
mysteries of love, jansenistical devotion is cold and
heartless. It stands self-convicted of wanting the
grace of prayer.

The Eucharist is, in Catholicism, the centre of
those pious communities known under the name of
Congregations. They have existed, at all times,
and places under ever-variable forms, for they are
precisely destined to correspond to the moral wants
of times and places. The outcry against these
institutions considered in themselves argues at least
a profound ignorance of human nature. As, besides
the tenets common to all, there are various modes of
conceiving them, every individual — country, and
period, having its peculiar intelligence ; in the same
manner and for the same reason, besides that fund
of piety which is common to all Christians, there
are modes equally diversified of feeling religion.
When a certain number of individuals agree in

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155

their ideas and feelings, these analogous disposi-
tions necessarily tend to associate, and for that
purpose seek an exterior and appropriate form.
This tendency produces in the intellectual order,
schools of Christian philosophy ; and, in the senti-
mental, congregations of piety. Their suppression
would reduce piety to a geometrical equality, to a
state of inactivity opposed to the laws of nature,
which so far from impeding, stimulate the free
and varied developement of individual power
and energy. But those particular societies, by the
very fact of having each its mode of life, would
soon form as many different modes of worship, were
they not based on those of general worship. This
is what the Church does, in giving them the altar of
sacrifice for a centre, and frequent communion as
their first law. The eucharistic devotiou, which is
of general obligation, is to the particular forms of
devotion which every individual may adopt what the
symbol is to their different systems : it is both the
foundation and the rule. Catholicism maintains, in
point of piety as of government, something fixed
and common, for such is, in every possible order of

156 GEREET ON

things, the necessary support of all indiuidual
activity and existence ; variety in the midst of unity.
Such is Catholicism — such is nature.

Frequent communion continually leads back the
soul to itself. This sort of action, sensible at every
period of the Church, is more perceptible in the
middle ages. The interior of monasteries exhibited
a vision of the angelic life amid the ferocity of
a barbarous age. The religious orders which
cultivated the soil of Europe still accomplished
more, they reclaimed the moral waste of the
soul. The Cenobites were obliged by their rule
often to approach the sacred table. The Divine
Word which alone resounded in the depths of their
solitude, and which was prolonged in the silence of
their meditations, dail^ reminded them of the perfect-
ion which a familiarity with the Holy of Holies
demanded from them. This thought continually
excited them to acquire the knowledge of their own
hearts. They cultivated those with exceeding care,
that they might carry to the most august as well as
to the sweetest of all mysteries, the purest and the
most delicate flower of human aifection. The ascetic

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157

works of that period are marked by an exquisite
refinement of feeling. From the cloister it gradually
made its way into the world, and, directing itself to
other objects, inspired chivalry with that mysticism
of love and honor, which has exercised such power-
ful influence on the manners and literature of the
christian world. The asceticism of the middle age
has handed down an inimitable work, to which
Catholics, Protestants and philosophers, have agreed
to pay the best tribute of admiration, viz. that of the
heart. How wonderful that a small book of mysticism
the production of such an age, should have imparted
a deeper tone of reflection to the meditative genius
of Leibnitz, and kindled almost to enthusiasm the
cold temperament of Fontenelle ! No person has ever
read a page of the Imitation, particularly in the
hour of affliction, who did not say in concluding :
this reading has done me good. Next to the Bible
this work is the sovereign friend of the soul. But
where did the poor solitary who wrote it find that
inexhaustible love ? for never would he have written
with so much power and sweetness had he not loved
much. He solves the question for us himself. Every

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line in his book on the sacrament is a commentary
on the preceding ones.

All the relations which we have now considered
present but imperfectly the influence of this principle
of love : to understand it fully, we should feel it.
Why should the infidel refuse to believe so many
Christians as to their internal sentiments. Does not
their conduct harmonise with their testimony ? Why
then should he disdain to hear them? Is there
nothing beautiful but what strikes the senses ? Are
the wonders of the heart to be despised as valueless,
and, if marks of the Divinity exist any where, where
shall they be sought for, if not in the inspiration of
virtue ? As for my part I bow with deeper reverence
to the accents that sanctify the soul, than to the
voice of genius. Let us then listen to them in
respectful silence. The Eucharist, they tell us, is
an integral part of the two worlds, a temple placed
on the boundaries of earth and heaven. There is
effected a union between the types of the one and
the realities of the other, and the communion is
accomplished as if beneath the half-opened vestibule
of the invisible sanctuary where the eternal union is

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159

consummated. "Whilst the -senses are detained in
the visible order, the soul feels the presence of the
invisible : it enters into it ; it partakes of its sub-
stance, like a man placed at the limits of this present
material system, who. stretching forth his hand,
grasps the boundaries of a higher world. There then
passes within the soul what human language would
fear to profane by expressing. To that confused
murmur of the passions, which as yet agitates the
faithful soul, like the last struggle of life, succeeds
a profound peace. Shortly after, a commotion sweet
as it is powerful, announces the presence of the Deity,
and immediately holy desires, prayer, patience, and
the spirit of sacrifice, often languid, are again revived.
All that is divine within her kindles at the moment :
the mental eye becomes purified and receives some
rays of that light which is reflected from a brighter
world. Emotions, which combine all that is touching
in sentiment with all that is calm in reflection, attest
the renewed harmony of the spirit and the senses.
We may frequently feel on other occasions the joys
of virtue ; here alone we are inebriated with all its
delights. You would fondly wish to retain these

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exquisite sensations, but your efforts are vain. They
have been shed on the soul, but to imbue her with
the sense of that word of happiness, the name of
which belongs to a lost language, whose idiom
spoken by the children of Adam contains but the
wreck. But the more clearly the soul comprehends
that word,the more deeply does she feel that it is not
of this world. Until she shall have deposited at the
portals of Heaven the burthen of terrestrial virtues,
until the moment shall have arrived when she will
be freed ever from hope, the joys of the captive soul
will be marked by suffering. The pleasure of this
world becomes insipid, its happiness a burthen,
and, whoever is deeply versed in life must acknow-
ledge, that the greatest miracle of communion is to
render it tolerable. These raptures of love mingled
with sorrow impart, at that solemn moment, a sub-
lime expression to the countenance. That of joy is
rarely so : because joy is so fugitive and false that it
appears to give to the human figure a sensless and
undignified expression. Sorrow, on the contrary,
almost always ennobles the countenance. But the
instinct of our primeval destiny, alarmed by the

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161

contrast, seeks another dignity than that of sorrow.
The true condition of man is the reparation of his
misery, and his countenance never exhibits a nobler
terrestrial aspect, than when he embodies the expres-
sion of that mystery of sorrow and grace, on
receiving the impress of a divine joy in the abyss of
his sufferings. Mark that christian who adores his
Saviour within his soul: would you not say that if
that mouth, closed by recollection, were to open, a
voice would come forth, attempting, though in a
plaintive tone the canticles of Heaven? It would
blend the sighs of man with the rapture of an angelic
spirit

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CHAPTER IX.

The connexion of all the errors that destroy faith
in Divine Love.

The order of the physical shadows forth the unity
of the spiritual world. Each particular phenomenon
is interwoven with more general phenomena, those
with others, and thus till we arrive at the universal
phenomenon which is the harmony of all particular
facts. What we denominate particular truths are, in
like manner, only glances more or less limited of the
eternal and infinite truth. He who contemplates the
material universe as the expression of a single law,
can easily understand how the sole violation of that
law in any given instance would include in principle

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163

the destruction of the entire, and draw after it the
total ruin of the system. In the same way, truth
being essentially one, all negations finally tend to
resolve themselves into one great negation, and
there is no error that does not assail the substantial
truth or God himself. Thus viewed every culpable
error is a deicide. The rejection of the catholic
doctrine respecting the Eucharist furnishes an
example the more remarkable as it strikingly presents
the close union of those consoling dogmas that vivify
the human soul by the revelation of boundless love.

The first protestant controvertists who argued
against this mystery of love unconsciously mooted a
question of vast importance. Freed from scholastic
subtilities on the essence of matter and spirit, now
exploded from all great systems of philosophy,
whether ideal or material, their difficulties arose
from the impossibility of conceiving an union of the
Infinite with man the finite being, according to the
mode of communication which the Catholic dogma
supposes. Let us attend to the consequence : the
chain of error is about to unfold itself.

It is evident to all that the Deists only applied

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the same logic to the fundamental mystery of Chris-
tianity, in demanding how the increated, impassible,
and infinite being could unite himself to our corrup-
tible and mortal nature, in short, how the infinite
being could unite himself to the finite, so as to form
the Man-God.

But the question does not stop here ; for it is
equally clear that the Pantheists only generalize it,
by asking in turn how the finite can co-exist
with the Infinite being who embraces all. Hence
the system of the absolute identity of all things :
the finite are then but the simple modifications of
the universal being.

Thus the question of the Protestants on the
Eucharist, of the Deists on the Incarnation, and
of the Pantheists on Creation, may be resolved into
the single question, viz., that of the relation of the
Infinite and finite beings, whereof Pantheism pre-
sents the general formula. It is for this reason it
attracts all other systems, which sooner or later are
absorbed by it, for it is the nature of the human
mind not to stop at particular questions, but to
ascend till it arrives to that which is the source of

THE EUCHARIST, 165

all others. History indeed attests the prevalence of
Pantheism compared to other systems of error. It is
at the same time the point of departure and the ulti-
mate goal of that philosophy which has broken the
bonds of fraternity with faith. It was seen watching
over its cradle in the East, and again we behold it
at the decline of Grecian philosophy, which, consu-
med by doubt, buried itself in the school of Alexan-
dria, beneath the ruins of Oriental pantheism. Our
age presents a similar tendency : the philosophy of
the eighteenth century, the offspring of Grecian
philosophy, evidently recedes in Germany and
France, before a more comprehensive philosophy,
which is reviving Indian pantheism under modem
forms. The mind of man, in estranging itself
from God, cannot divest itself of that all-absorbing
idea. Even in destroying it, he seeks after it
and pursues its very shadow. After having refused
to believe in a union of God with man, in his love,
and even in his existence, when he sees himself
separated from him, that unnatural solitude
terrifies him — because the want of the Infinite
being becomes a torment to him, and no sooner

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has he said in his heart : there is no God,
than his bewildered reason exclaims all is God.

Some perhaps will be astonished to find that
protestan t logic leads directly to this great error.
And in truth the distance which separates the con-
ceptions of Spinosa from the arguments of John
Calvin and Theodore of Beze is very considerable.
But if the necessary connexion of ideas be closely
attended to, it will appear evident that the latter
have only narrowed to the dimensions of their under-
standing that vast principle of error the develope-
ment of wThich has been presented by the dutch
Jew in colossal proportions.

But we must proceed still further, for the protes-
tant objection, generalized in pantheism, is, at bottom,
but the identical objection of the sceptics against
all certitude. The reason of man is fallible, because
it is finite ; certitude is a participation in a reason
essentially infallible, and consequently in the sove-
reign and infinite reason. In demanding then how
the reason of man can be certain, they simply ask
how finite can participate in infinite reason: a
question evidently insoluble ; and for the same reason

THE EUCHARIST.

167

so are the corresponding questions of the Pantheist,
the Deist, and the Protestant. They reject each
one of the catholic truths on the same principle that
the sceptic rejects all certitude. Scepticism is the
refusal to believe, prior to demonstration the com-
munion of the human soul in truth which is its
necessary aliment. Is the perception of our reason
on this point the primaiy motive of our belief? No,
for every perception of reason supposes it. We
believe it because nature impels us to it, and not
because our intelligence explains it. But what is
this blind instinct in the constitution of our nature ?
It implies that the principle of our existence, what-
ever it be, is not a bad principle that would consign
us to be the miserable dupes of an universal illusion,
but a principle essentially good, which creates within
us the idea and the want of truth only for the purpose
of satisfying the latter. Thus our belief in truth
and goodness is simultaneous : the life of the soul
commences in the same manner as it is developed,
viz., by faith in love.

This brings us to consider in another point of
view the error of the Protestants, and its connexion

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with the errors destructive of faith in divine love.
If the arrrogant weakness of reason is offended with
the mysteries of power, because by pointing out its
limits they humble it ; there is also in the folds of
the corrupted heart a secret aversion to the mysteries
of love, because they render more visible by a
striking contrast all the horror of its depravity. In
the same way as reason when humbled arms itself
with its own darkness to combat whatever it does not
understand, thus the will of man seeks in its own
corruption a frightful pretext to reject the prodigies
of love which confound it. Why conceal it, we all
cany within us this fatal disposition — the most
terrific disorder of the human heart. This abyss has
its degrees ; let us endeavour to sound their
depths.

If God has condescended to so great an excess of
tenderness as to dwell in us and we in him by the
Eucharistic communion, why does such love suffer
men to continue a prey to so many frightful disorders'?
Let the Protestants interrogate themselves, and say
if this be not the secret of their heart. But lo !
another voice is heard : it rises from a more profound

THE EUCHARIST.

169

part of the abyss, from that region where dwell the
blasphemers of Christ. If God became man, why
is man so depraved ? God, say they, visited the
world and changed it not ! Descend still lower,
hearken to that other voice which proclaims aloud
the symbol of despair, in protesting that the universe
is not governed by supreme benevolence, that the
power of evil equals the power of good, and eternally
disputes with it the empire of creation. Whence
comes this desolating doctrine ? On what is it based ?
On the very same principle. Under a God infinitely
good, they exclaim, why should evil exist ? Here
ends Faith in infinite love : next to this — is the hell
of Atheism.

Who would not tremble on contemplating the terrific
fecundity of a single error ? Protestant heterodoxy
conceals the germ of that rash doubt, which gave rise
to the blasphemies of manicheism against Providence,
as well as the generative principle of Pantheism,
which destroys the idea of God, by prostituting it
to other beings. Whence come these astonishing
connexions between doctrines apparently so remote ?
Let us penetrate still more deeply into this mystery

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of error, and we shall find at the bottom of all these
doubts, the one identical question which has not cea-
sed to agitate the human race, since it heard these
deceitful words : — you will be like unto Gods know-
ing good and evil.

Good, properly so called, is the Infinite Being.
Evil, which is the privation of good, is, taken in its
most general sense, a privation of being ; and in this
sense every finite heing is evil, inasmuch as it is
finite. Thus, whether we ask with the Manicheans,
how disorder, or the privation of good can exist
under the empire of perfect goodness, or whether
we ask, with the Pantheists, how the finite or the
absence of being can co-exist with the infinite, we
only pursue, in two different points of view, that
perfect knowledge of good and evil which is the
incommunicable attribute of the Infinite intelligence.
This unlimited curiosity is the original sin of the
human mind ; and hence the root of all these errors
to use an expression of Paschal, draws its folds and
windings from the depths of this abyss.

What a strange perversion of the human mind !
During six thousand years, it has sought on every

THE EUCHARIST.

171

side the solution of this sombre problem, and each
generation demands it in vain from those who have
gone before it to the tomb. This in itself is a painful
condition : but that reason should fatigue and exhaust
itself in the attempt to infuse despair into the heart
by wresting from it that belief which is its joy, its
life ; this, alas, is the extreme of miser}7. Happy
they who, relying, not on the changeable conceptions
of their isolated reason, but on the immutable teaching
of universal tradition which has transmitted to them
the word of God, are devotedly attached to this
vivifying word, and seek not, in the darkness of
reason and corruption of the will, miserable argu-
ments against the omnipotence of Divine charity.
Fixed in the imperishable belief of the human race,
they enjoy a profound repose. This repose of reason
is not torpor or apathy. Though not exposed to rest-
less agitation, these children of faith are by no means
in bondage. Their faith ever aspires to intelli-
gence. They know that the condition of man is
to pass from simple belief to the unclouded vision,
and, though this change camiot be perfectly
accomplished but in the future order, they continually

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aim at it in the present, and realize on that know-
ledge a faint reflection of the heavenly vision. Borne
on the wing of faith, their reason pervades the
universe to investigate the mysteries of life and death.
It asks each creature the word of order which it
received, each phenomenon represents to it a divine
thought, and creation spreads before it as the transpa-
rent veil of the ever living truth. If shades mingle
with these terrestrial lights, it knows how to wait with
patience. It knows that the limits which arrest its
progress will one day disappear. Such is the intelli-
gence of the believe?', in its developement, patient,
because immortal, its look, always fixed on the
horizon of eternity. The rays which it collects here
below, the pale reflection of that glorious day for
which they sigh, serve but to create within them a
more ardent desire of mi clouded brightness. But
though they do not now perceive as they will then
perceive, they love already as they will hereafter.
This is the reason why they understand better the
mysteries of goodness than those of power. "When
the solutions they receive do not fully satisfy them ;
their reason, purified by love,, comprehends at least

THE EUCHARIST.

173

the sense of that supreme solution. It is thus God
loved the world*

* Sic enim Deus Dilexit mundum. — Evanglic St. Joannes
c. iii., v. 16.

THE EUCHAP.IST.

175

NOTES.

NOTE 1.

Though the primitive order of divine communica-
tions was impeded by this original crime.

All close observers of human nature have recog-
nised that a tendency to evil prevails in man. To
their remarks on this point may be added the
sentiments of one of the most zealous amongst the
partisans of material physiology. "The child is as
yet ignorant of the enjoyment derivable from reflec-
tion, except those that he procures by artifice,
which he is always prepared to substitute for force,
whenever he comes into collision with another
stronger than himself. This species of pleasure
seems to possess more attractions for him than that
of beneficence unless he discover in the latter means

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to indulge his predominent faculties : thus he pro-
tects a child less strong than himself whom immedi-
ately after he will make the sport of his tyranny.
In general, lie prefers evil to gocd, because it minis-
ters better to his vanity, and affords him greater
commotion ; an enjoyment which must be procured
at any risk. It is for this reason he prides himself
in breaking inanimate objects ; for he finds therein
the two-fold pleasure founded on the necessity of
self-satisfaction, viz. that of destroying resistance
and exciting the rage of rational creatures, which in
his mind is nothing less than a victory that becomes
a source of gratification to him, when he has escaped
punishment by flight. The delight which he feels
on beholding the torture of animals can be accounted
for only on the same principle ; that of his fellow
creatures would be equally agreeable to him, were
he not curbed by fear, for even then the principle
of self-preservation begins to exercise its influence.
Pity restrains him from time to time ; but its deve-
lopement is scarcely perceptible in children of the
male sex ; it exists more frequently and is felt more
deeply in females of a tender age. I grant that all

THE EUCHARIST.

177

the acts of children do not bear this impress of
depravity. The benevolent disposition which cha-
racterizes some in after life begins to shew itself
anterior to reason ; but the majority is of the class
already described. Strong children of the male sex
who feel the necessity of exercising their strength
in external movements, are more irresistibly born to
the commission of evil. There are few who do not
employ their force against the weaker class ; it is the
first impulse of their nature, but when they are not
born to be ferocious they are stopt by the tears of
their victim, until by a fresh impulse they are excited
to perpetrate a similar crime."* The child prefers
evil to good. This indeed is a frightful enigma.
Discover, if you can, an explanation preferable to
that furnished by Christianity. It is true it accounts
for this problem of all ages and nations by a primitive
mystery; but this mystery, attested by general
tradition, is itself the first fact of history, and has it
not been rightly asserted that all our science consists
in deriving our ignorance from its remotest source.

* Vide Treatise on irritation, by Dr. Broussais, p. 101,
1828.

M

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NOTE II.

In the ancient mysteries of Mithra, which finally
prevailed through a considerable portion of the
Moman empire, St. Justin and Tertullian inform
us that bread and a vessel full of water were
placed before the initiated.

Tertullian says that the devil " whose principal
study and business it is to corrupt the truth, strives
to imitate in his idolatrous mysteries the holy
ceremonies of the christian religion. The devil
baptizes some, namely, his own disciples and adhe-
rents ; by washing, he promises the remission of sin,
and if I yet remember, Mithra signs his soldiers on
their foreheads : he celebrates the oblation of bread
and introduces an image of the resurrection.

Diabolo scilicet, cujus sunt partes, intervertendi veritatem,
qui ipsas quoque res sacramentorum divinovurrf, idolorum mys-
teriis emulatur. Tingit et ipse quosdain, ulique credentes et

THE EUCHARIST. 179

NOTE III.

It would be difficult to imagine any thing more
solemn than the prayers and benedictions
which preceded and followed this rite.

This part of the liturgy of Zoroastre, besides the
information it affords us respecting the forms of
ancient worship, is also in many other respects, a
monument of the primitive faith which has been

developed by Christianity. We shall cite a few
extracts.

THE INVOCATION.

O you, benign master, who reserve for men the
reward which they merit, remunerate publicly, the

fideles suos : expositionem delictorum de lavacro repromittit, et
si adhue memini, Mithra signat illic in frontibus milites suos :
celebrat et panis oblationem, et imaginem resurrectionis indu-
cit (Tertull. de Prescript hsereticor. XL.)

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supplicant who invokes you ,may I be pure in this world
and happy in the next, and may the soul of Sapetinan
Zoroastre, the pure Genius, those of all the servants
of Ormusd, of all the military, of all the labourers,
of all the artisans of the world, who have come for
this Miezd, and to whom it has been acceptable,
may they at my departure from life come to meet me at
twelve hundred gams,* from Beheseth, the highest
heaven, from the bright Gorotman, the seat of
happiness. May they receive this miezd, and be
always present to me, (when I pray) may my good
works increase ! May the accursed source of sin and
evil be banished for ever ! May the world be pure,
the heavens excellent ! and finally may purity and
holiness prevail ! May the souls be received in
Gorotman." — Zend Avesta, torn. ii. ; jechts Sades,
Afrin des sept. Amschaspands, page 80.

And as the reversibility of merit was universally
believed : The communion of saints * * * *
O may power, grandeur, and victory be given by
the aid and intercession of the celestial genii, to this

* A measure of nine feet

THE EUCHARIST.

181

soul, may these favours be accorded to the spirit that
I commemorate ! May he obtain what I desire for
him, who has presented pure oblations for the
Miezd ; who has given liberally for the Zour* in
honor of the pure ! May this person participate in
the good works which I will perform in this world,
in those that the just may perform ! If he perform
good works, and honour the celestial genii, may his
prayers in this world, as a reward, reach the just
Judge. — Ormusd, and the Amas chaspands, f (Afrin
du Gahanbar, page 81.)

THE CONVOCATION.

I invoke here the Szeds J of heaven and of earth,
the celestial Rauzgar, the pure genii, from Kaio-
moots § down to Sosiosch, || the principle of good,
replete with happiness and splendor. Those who are,

* Consecrated water,
f The celestial spirits of the first order. J Angel*.
§ The first man. |j The expected Redeemer.

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who have been, and who shall be ; those who are
born, or are not born in this province, or in another
province ; the men of this world, the women, the
young men and maids, all those who have died
Behdinans. * To commemorate all the pure genii,
is a good work ; I commemorate them, and I am
convinced that by so doing, I shall perform a meri-
torious act. I invoke here all the souls, all the spirits
of Behdinans. — (Afrin du Gahanbar, page 81.)

THE FINAL PRAYER AND BENEDICTION.

May you be always victorious by the Miezd offered
to God ; 0 pure, you who have come here with
clean oblations, with old wine ! May the throne,
the seat of light, be finally given to you ; may all
your wishes be accomplished I May you be always
far from Pectiare, i.e. the author of evil. ! May
Mansrespand, the keeper of heaven, watch over you,
and may all the pure of the seven Keschvars f assist

* Followers of the perfect law.
f The seven parts of the world.

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183

you ; you Behdinans, who have come here with this
Miezd. Until you shall have arrived at Gorotman,
may you be pure, may you live long, and may my
prayers in your regard be heard ! (Afrin de
Zoroastre, page 94.)

NOTE 4. — THE GERMANS, &c.

This note may be seen fully explained in the
Catholic, published June 1823.— page 369.

NOTE 5,

Though one of its circumstances is contrary to the
prohibitions of the Koran. The eighteenth of March
was the day called hayt corban, that is the feast of
sacrifice, by which they understand the sacrifice of
Abraham. The Arabians call it hayt-hesa, and the
Turks be hue ba yram or great festival. It is also
known by the name haytmura, or brilliant festival,

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This festival is the principal and most solemn of the
Mahometan religion. — (Travels in Persia, by Chardin,
torn, ix., p. 6, Paris, 1811.) Though the blood has
not been let, the victim is eaten ; notwithstanding that
it is opposed to the Mahometan law. — ii. ibid, p. 14.

NOTE 6.

A communion in grace, at the same time spiritual
and corporal, Sfc.

The Catholic theory of the sacraments is but the
developement and perfection of the primitive belief.
In the same way as truth is communicated to man,
by the medium of sensible signs or speech, so it was
believed that grace was imparted to him by material
symbols. In his treatise on mysteries, a strange
collection of traditional truths and wild speculations,
Jamblicus speaks rather remarkably of the funda-
mental idea of these mysteries, veiled in primitive
faith and worship. It is true, it may be conjectured,
that he added to the ancient theology which he
was reviewing principles borrowed from Christian

THE EUCHARIST.

185

theology ; but, even in this hypothesis, it is evident
that he would not have done so, did he not deem the
latter a dev elopement of the former. " The due
observance of the divine precepts and works, which
surpass our intelligence, and the wonderful efficacy
of the symbols and holy rites, known only to the
Gods, procure for us the deific union. When we
officiate^ it is not by the power of our intelligence
that the sacraments are effected, for in that case their
action would proceed from us and be purely intellec-
tual ; but, though we are ignorant as to the manner,
in which they produce their effect the power of
the gods, without being excited by our intelligence,
recognizes of itself its own ineffable images.

Universal causes are not moved by particular
effects ; it is for this reason that our intelligence
does not principally determine the divine action.
Nevertheless, intelligence, holy sentiments and
purity, are required as a sort of accompanying cause.
But it is the holy sacraments that principally excite
the divine will ; thus the Deity is excited by itself,
and does not receive its principle of action from any
inferior or secondary cause.

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Imagine not that the principle of their efficacy is
to be found in us, or that they depend on the
knowledge of the truth which is in our intelligence,
neither do they become deceitful signs in conse-
quence of the errors of our mind. — Iamblicus, on
the Egyptian, Chaldean and Assyrian mysteries,
page 220, Basilean, 1532.

NOTE VII.

Hence arises the necessity of a primitive revelation,
which indeed would be the most philosophical
conception^ even though it had not been the
universal belief.

The materialism of the eighteenth century, in
rejecting primitive revelation, proclaimed that man
was born in a state of barbarism, in the last degree
of abasement. The absurdity of this hypothesis is
all but admitted by the spiritual philosophy of the
present age, which irresistibly impelled to adopt
sounder notions, no longer dares to uphold those of
the last century. The change which has been effec-

THE EUCHARIST.

187

ted on this point claims peculiar notice, as it will
lead the philosophers further, perhaps than they
would wish. We shall give two instances, selected
from opposite schools.

" It has been asked by a writer of the sentimental
school if the savage state was the primitive condition
of man."

" Some philosophers of the eighteenth century
responded with much levity in the affirmative."

" All their religious and political systems set
out from the hypothesis of a race primitively reduced
to the brute condition, roaming in the forests and
contending with one another for the acorn and the
flesh of animals; but had such been the natural
condition of man, by what means could he have
emancipated himself from it?"

" Are not the reasonings by which he is supposed
to have been induced to adopt the social system a
begging of the question ? Is it not evident that this
is a vicious circle? Who does not perceive that
every species of reasoning supposes the previous
existence of a social state ? Its advantage can be duly
appreciated only by enjoyment. In this hypothesis

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society would be the result of the developement of
intelligence, whilst on the contrary the developement
of intelligence is itself the result of Society."

" To invoke chance, is to substitute a word devoid
of sense for a cause. Chance does not triumph over
nature. Chance has not civilised beings of an
inferior class, which, in the hypothesis of our phi-
losophers, ought have also experienced some lucky
accident." " To regard civilization as the gifts of
strangers, is to leave the problem unsolved. You
may point to masters instructing their disciples, but
you cannot inform me who instructed the masters
themselves, it is a chain suspended in the air.
Besides it is notorious that savages repel civilization
when presented to them." The nearer man is to a
state of barbarism, the more stationary is he, the
hordes that have been discovered at the bomidaries
of the earth have not made a single advance towards
civilized life. The inhabitants of the coasts visited
by Nearchus are at the present day what they were,
two thousand years ago. These wanderers still
continue to snatch a precarious subsistence from the
sea. Their wealth consists in aquatic bones cast on

THE EUCHARIST.

189

the shoie. Want has not instructed, nor has misery
enlightened them. Modern travellers have found
them in the same state that they had been discovered
by the Admiral of Alexander." ''It is the same
with the savages of antiquity described by Agathar-
cides and with those of our days of whom Bruce
speaks. Surrounded by civilzed nations, near the
kingdom of Meroe, so celebrated for its priesthood,
the equal in power as well as in science of the
Egyptian priesthood, these hordes have continued
down to this day in a state of barbarism. Some of
them take shelter under trees, others lay snares for
the Rhinoceros and Elephant, and subsist on their
flesh. Others in fine collect the swarms of locusts
which are driven by the winds into their deserts,
or the remains of crocodiles and sea-horses, whilst the
maladies described by Diodorus as arising from these
impure aliments press as heavily to day on the
descendants of those unhappy people as at any former
period. Ages have past away and no change has been
effected in their condition, no progress is discoverable
among them, no invention has characterised their
labour.*'

190 GERBE32 ON

" Nor do we imagine that the savage state was
that in which man found himself at his origin. It is
not our intention to go back to the beginning of time
and state how religion commenced, but merely by
what means when it is in its rudest form, it can
uphold itself and gradually arrive to perfection."
" We are far from asserting that this rude form was
the primitive one ; we are not opposed to its being
looked on as a deterioration." (Religion viewed
in its origin, its form and its developements,
by M. Benjamin Constant, tome 1, p. 153 — 157.)
If man was not born in a savage state, how could
he have been born civilised? The author now
cited very prudently, pauses at this question.
He is far from asserting this, he is not opposed
to that, he does not wish to say how, for in truth
he is afraid.

Let us now attend to an advocate of rationalism.

" It was particularly during the first age of the
world that this faculty of simple view, this fortuitous
intelligence, so necessary to man in his primitive
state of destitution, must have shewn itself with all
its force. There must have been for him an instan-

THE EUCHARIST.

191

taneous enlightenment, and if we may so speak, a
fiat lux of thought, to impart to him a sort of
intuitive science, which might supply experience by
instinct, and reason by sentiment. Otherwise society,
without those notions, on which its very existence is
based, would totter and finally disappear ! The child
of a day, without tradition or acquired wisdom, how
fearful would have been its state, had it been forced
to frame for itself a system of philosophy suited to
the urgency of the moment ? To have positive
principles of action, was the first law of its existence ;
it was worthy the divine wisdom, when forming it,
to communicate them to it by prompt and special
grace. It is for this reason that the Deity assumed
the character of revealer after that of creator. Not
that he took a body or became incarnate, every
expression of this nature is, in our mind, a mere
figure. He has neither voice nor language, his will
is manifested only by symbols. It is as the Father
of light, as author of all that is and all that appears,
that he communicates himself to man. It is thus
that revelation was made, at least it is in this sense
we comprehend it.'- (Essay on the history of phi-

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losophy in France for the xixth century, by M. Th.
Damison, p. 387, 388.^

Reduced to plain and accurate terms, this poetry
is the union of two contradictory ideas. The author
admits that with the first man intelligence was born
in some extraordinary manner, without admitting a
corresponding cause. Were this phenomenon the
result of the native faculties of man, the history of
the human race should present similar ones. Now,
what does it teach us ? In the first place, it teaches
us that, in the majority of men, intelligence proceeds
from the aid of language which they are taught ; in
the second place, that the savage state, in which
marks of a similar intellectual power should be
perceptible, in proportion as it approximates to what
is termed the primitive state, far from affording
any, presents a series of opposite facts ; and finally
that the individuals who are shut out from all social
instruction are by no means enlightened by thepower
of nature or the phenomena of the universe, and
that they remain in a state of utter abasement,
instead of this fortuitous intelligence, this intuitive
science, this fiat lux of thought, with which the

THE EUCHARIST.

193

imaginative genius of our author compliments the
first men. Irreconcilable with the laws of the
human mind manifested by universal experience,
this hypothesis involves an absurd miracle, wrought
without the intervention of a miraculous cause. To
say that we are enlightened at times by ideas of
whose origin we are ignorant, that, in certain
circumstances which exalt the mind, some men are
favoured with what is called sudden illuminations,
and deduce therefrom the existence of an intuitive
science anterior to every sort of instruction, this
indeed is a strange abuse of language. All facts of
this nature, viewed in themselves, suppose a combi-
nation of pre-existing notions, and are found only
in minds already developed, furnished with ideas as
well as expressions, and enjoying the means by which
the social man exercises the faculty of thought, whilst,
for the primitive man, intelligence itself was to be
created. A question is not answered by examples
sought in an order of things essentially opposite.

<£ To conclude — -the materialism of the last century
admitted that man was born in a state of barbarism."

"The spiritual philosophy of our age admits more

N

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or less distinctly that he was born intelligent and
civilized."

. " Did the materialism of the last century
establish the hypothesis of primitive stupidity on
facts ? No : it maintained it as the necessary conse-
quence flowing from its rejection of the primitive
revelation proclaimed by Christianity.

Has the spiritual philosophy which succeeded it
endeavoured to refute the arguments from which it
inferred that man, deprived of all communion with
a superior being, must necessarily have commenced
by ignorance and brutalism? No — but, viewing
this hypothesis on its own merits, it deemed it oppo-
sed to the laws of the existence both of man and society.

For these reasons all the researches of philosophers
on this question may be reduced to the following
sylogism. Every sort of external information being
rejected, brutalism must have been the native state of
mankind, but, this supposition is inadmissible, there-
fore, &.c. The last century, and particularly one of
its most eminent writers, Hume, established the first
proposition on proofs. * The new spiritual school
* Which to some superficial minds appeared plausible.

THE EUCHARIST.

195

contends for the second. Christianity fondly che-
rishes the consequence.

Philosophy can only emancipate itself from this
circle of contradictions by solving the question already
proposed by Fichte : namely " Who instructed the
first men? for we have demonstrated that man
stands in need of instruction. No man could have
instructed them, whereas the difficulty is about the
first men. They must then have been instructed by
some intelligent being who was not man, until they
were sufficiently enlightened to instruct one another.
(Vide the rights of nature.)

NOTE VIII.

Thus the belief in a man- God of which very many
striking traces are found in antiquity, was com-
prehended, though imperfectly, in the general
desire of an efficacious expiation.

According to y-king, one of the sacred books
of the Chinese, the holy One alone can offer a

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sacrifice pleasing to Chang- Ty i.e. the Lord
of heaven. But what were the characteristics of
the Holy One according to tradition ? " It would not
be difficult to prove from history that the ancients
had ideas respecting the Messias, which were directly
derived from revelation, and clearly prove that the
most remote antiquity was more favoured by God
than many would appear to belive, affecting ignorance
as to the writings of Vossius, Beurrier, Thomassin,
Huet, Mourgues, and other learned men who, after
the example of the holy Fathers, collected the
remains of antiquity. It is a well known fact that
Confucius declared that the Holy One by excellence
was in the East ; but is it known what the learned
amongst the Chinese understood by the Holy One ?
The name of holy, says Ouang-ky, is given to him who
Jcnows all, sees all, hears all. All his words are so
many maxims ; his example a rule of conduct. He
unites within himself three orders of beings, possesses
allgood; heis all celestial and admirable. The book,
Tecliao-sin Tou Hoci says The Holy one is so
high and so profound that he is incomprehensible.
He is the only one whose wisdom "knows no limits,

THE EUCHARIST.

197

before him futurity stands unveiled. His charity
embraces the universe, and like the spring-time
vivifies it; all his words are efficacious. He is
one with Tien ( Heaven.) According to Lein-Hen
the heart of Tien is in the bosom of the Holy One,
and his maxims on his lips. The world cannot
Jcno?v Tien without the Holy one. The nations
expect him, says Mong-Tse, as a declining plant
expects the dew and rain. It may be asserted that all
this can be understood of a wise man, such as Confu-
cius, or of a great emperor, as Yao-Chan. But the
following words which are found in the large com-
mentary of Chou-King, can in no wise be understood
but of a being superior to man. The Tien is the
invisible holy one ; the Holy one is the Tien who
became visible to teach men. How is the language
of Y-King on the Holy one to be understood ? This
man is the Tien and the Tien is this man. In what
sense are we to regard the epithets, divine man,
celestial man, the most beautiful of men, the man
by excellence, the wonderful man, the first-born
amongst men? How are we to interpret what has
been said in various forms, and by so many authors,

♦

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viz., that he will renew the earth, that he will reform
the public manners, expiate the crimes of the world,
die in sorrow and opprobrium, and finally that he
will throw open the heavens &c. Memoir of the
Chinese. Tom, ix, p. 384.

NOTE IX.

Hie propensity to illuminism, which has been found
at every period among this class of Protestants,
augments and strengthens in proportion as
rationalism destroys the little faith which the
reformation has preserved.

In a work recently published on the state of the
Protestant religion in Germany, Mr. Hugh James
Rose, a minister of the English church, has forcibly
pointed out this result of rationalism : — " The
doctrines of the innovators must have shocked and
afflicted all who as yet were sincerely attached to
Christianity.

But as the churches of Germany wanted both a

THE EUCHARIST. 199

common centre and a fixed doctrine, the friends of
religion no where found a rallying point. Each one
was obliged to adopt the plan of defence which
appeared to him best calculated to uphold the good
cause ; and though many theologians, and especially
Storr, displayed great zeal in the defence of the
orthodox doctrine, it appears that the majority of
those who are ranked among the antagonists of
rationalism, fearing that they could not maintain the
ancient system in its various parts, wisely judged that
more evil than good would result from a continuation
of the controversy. Owing to these apprehensions,
many layed down the weapons of reason, took refuge
in their own thoughts, and closing their eyes on the
exterior world where every thing scandalized and
afflicted them, they betook themselves to contem-
plation, in order to attain to a union with God,
the immediate vision of the truths of faith, which
has always been the end of mysticism. For
when we presume too much on human reason,
we generally end by despairing in it. This tendency
to mysticism was kept up among the common people
by various religious tracts, some of which were the

200

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result of native talent, others imported into Germany .

The Protestant principle, generalized by philo-
sophy and applied to the basis of human science, has
been productive of similar results. If on the one
hand, it begets by its peculiar action scepticism, on
the other, it leads to mysticism the minds- in which
this rational destruction of faith is combined with
the want of some sort of faith.

A similar tendency, continues Mr. Rose, resulted
from the philosophy of the day for the higher orders.
Three systems of philosophy have successively
reigned in Germany, and even still they contend there
for the empire of the mind. The two first, those of
Kant and Fichte, are preparing the way for mysti-
cism, at least inasmuch as they reject all objective
proofs of religion, and substitute for them others
more subjective. I do not mean to insinuate that
it was the intention of these two philosophers to
lead the mind to mysticism; but the principles
established by them lead indirectly to it. In refusing
to believe that human reason can establish the exis-
tence of God and the intellectual world, and admitting
as the basis of these truths but a practical faith

THE EUCHARIST,

■2\

rendered necessary by our moral constitution, Kant
would have us seek truth only in the investigation of
this practical principle which is said to be inherent
to our nature.

Xow who does not perceive that such an abstrac-
tion of the exterior world in the research of truth,
presents a striking resemblance with the operations
of mysticism which are equally internal. Besides, if
reason has not the right to place an intelligent author
over this beautiful spectacle of the heavens and the
earth, imagination and sentiment will do it against
reason, and that such an important truth should
depend solely on their authority, would appear to me
a further advance to mysticism. However if Kant
states that we know nothing of God, at least he makes
a distinction between God and the world. Fechte
does not stop even here, for he says what we deno-
minate Providence and moral order, has not an ex-
istence distinct from our moral nature. In what-
ever light we view the charge of atheism, prefered
agahist the author of this doctrine, it is evident
that such a system tends to mysticism, whereas he
admits so intimate and essential a union of the soul

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with God that it would be impossible to conceive the
existence of God independent of our moral nature.
But if mysticism is only a consequence more or less
direct of the two first systems, it may be regarded
as the basis of the third, viz. that of Schelling.

Though agreeing with Kant as to the impotence
of reason, he rejects the consequence drawn by him,
viz., that we have no knowledge of the intellectual
world, and he maintains that we can arrive at that
knowledge, not through the medium of reasoning,
but by the shorter path of intuition. In his system
God is the only existing being ; he is both the unity
and totality of all that exists : whatever is said to exist
independently of him has no real existence ; even
we do not exist ourselves really. What is termed our
individual, personal existence is but a mere phantom,
for our reality results from our identity with God.
This system, to which we have alluded only to point
out its close relation to mysticism, representing God
as the absolute being independently of whom nothing
exists, and by the very fact teaching the identity of
many things that appear to have a separate existence,
cannot derive its proofs either from reason or the

THE EUCHARIST.

203

senses, which, so far from favouring such a doctrine,
proclaim the very contrary. It became necessary then
to evoke a power which could raise us above the
sphere of experience, a faculty calculated to trans-
form into truth and reality what reason and the
senses declared to be impossible and false. What is
this power, this faculty ? it is the intuition of the
absolute, in other words, an imagination, soaring
above the regions of poetical genius which in its
inventions should never go beyond, what reason and
the senses can admit, at least, as possible. In con-
sequence of these principles, great importance was
attached to whatever could nourish or excite the
imagination, as well as to the impressions that might
be produced from acting on the senses. There are
some among the disciples of Schelling who bitterly
lament the coldness of protestant worship, exhort
the preachers to address themselves solely to the
senses and imagination. Not a few authors of that
school regret even the pomp of Paganism.

The Catholic religion has been also complimented ;
many have openly given up Protestantism, whilst
others desire to introduce a portion of the Catholic

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ceremonies into the reformed worship. Some of the
disciples of Schelling profess what may be termed
an allegorical Catholicism. They make use of a
catholic nomenclature in the exposition of their
master's system, as well as in speaking of the
sacrifice and priesthood of the christian religion,
but the sense they attach to these orthodox expres-
sions bear no affinity whatsoever to their ordinary and
natural signification. It is not however to be sup-
posed that all the changes which have taken place
with regard to religion in Germany, are to be ascribed
to this philosophical mysticism. Many proselytes,
in entering the pale of a church which, in
the midst of her horrible corruptions, * has preserved

* The trite phrase the horrible corruptions of the
Catholic Church does not, in the most remote degree, affect
the general controversy such as it is at the present day. You
admit that if the independance of individual reason were
once established as a principle, the total ruin of Christianity
would be the result. Then you must also admit that Christianity
cannot uphold itself, but in virtue of the Catholic principle of
authority, or you must invent some principle of belief which
will be neither the Catholic or Protestant principle, and you
will be good enough to mark the absurdity. If the thirty-nine
articles of the English church are to be believed in virtue of
private judgment, you revert to the system which you have

THE EUCHARIST.

205

at least the form and principal doctrines of a true
Church, seek there that peace which they had in
vain sought amidst the interminable changes of the
Protestant church of Germany, and by the successive
rejection of all the truths of Christianity, (vide The
Catholic Memorial, January 1829.)

NOTE X.

TJius the institutions of ecclesiastical celibacy,
though its developement required time, and
though it suffered many modifications, is univer-
sal in its principle.

The historical errors relative to the law of cele-
bacy, which have been advanced by writers who
were pre-disposed to speak too lightly of matters on
which very probable they did not maturely reflect,

declared incompatible with, the existence of Christianity. If
on the contrary, the English church contends that they are to
be adopted on her authority, she sports -with human reason :
whereas she owes her existence to the private judgment of the
Reformers opposed to the authority of the Catholic church.

206 GERBET ON

would fill a volume. We regret that the most
recent example of this kind should have been fur-
nished by Mr. Villemain in his course of lectures
during the past year. u I shall with your leave make
no reference to Gibbon, who tells us that the Bishops
instituted priests, and thus indemnified themselves,
by this spiritual generation for the celibacy that had
been imposed upon them. Alas! how much more
interesting would it not have been and no less phi-
losophical to attend to what had occurred at the
Council of Nice, to refer to the Bishops discussing
the law of celibacy, and, in the midst of those rigo-
rists, to point to that venerable old man, the martyr
Paphnutios, one of the confessors of the Egyptian
church, raising his voice, and warning them : (not
to divest the human heart of all its affections.")
Fifth lesson, May 1828, p. 33— Unfortunately for
the interesting nature of this anecdote, it is anything
but certain. The writers prior to Socrates, and
particularly Bufinus, who in his ecclesiastical history
is very copious in his details of that Council makes
no mention of it. Socrates, lev. 1, c. xi, and after
him Sozomene who has given the abridgement of his

THE EUCHARIST.

207

works, are the only authors whose testimony can be
appealed to. But there are very sufficient reasons
for not crediting those authors. For, in the first
place, among the Egyptian Bishops who assisted at
the Council of Nice that of Paphnutios is not found,
and yet according to Socrates he was Bishop of a city
of the Thebaic!. In the second place, they pretend
that the Council, adopting the advice of Paphnutios,
determined nothing on the article of celibacy; an
assertion which is directly opposed to the third canon
of that very Council. Their narrations is equally
opposed to the testimony of more ancient authors
such as St. Jerome,* St. Epiphanius, f who
inform us that, according to the general discipline,
married men, who had been received among the
clergy, were obliged to observe continence from
the very moment they began to exercise the sacred
functions : that this law flourished wherever the
canons of the church were attended to ; and that,
though in some places, relaxation had introduced

* Libr. contr, Virgil, circa iait — Apolog. pro libr. contra
Jovinian, ad finem.

f Libr. contr. haeres ad finem. — Heeres 59.

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a contrary practice, the existence of the law could
not be questioned. Besides, in the discourse which
Socrates and Sozomene lend to Paphnutos, and
which relates only to that particular class of ecclesi-
astics of which we have just spoken, there is not a
syllable of the sentimental phrase against religious
celibacy in general, which the fancy of M. Villemain
has supplied.

NOTE XI.

The real presence, the basis of the public worship by
which Catholicism acts on men in the aggregate
is not less intimately connected with the practice
of confession, the organ through which it acts
in a mode corresponding to the various necessities
of individuals.

As man is in a certain sense a two-fold being,
the passions rarely succeed in their attempt to stifle
the sentiment of justice. Protestantism, as every
individual, has its two-fold self. The one which

THE EUCHARIST.

209

declaims against confession may be recognized by its
tone of bitterness and hatred. The other does
reverence to this salutary institution, and the homage
that it pays it, calm as reason, is betimes accompa-
nied with an accent of sorrow and regret which
imparts wonderful force to this cry of conscience.
Luther could never summon up courage enough to
annihilate the tribunal of penance ; even in one of
his last works, he thus expressed himself: — Before
God we must acknowledge ourselves culpable of all
our crimes, not excepting those which we cannot call
to mind : but we are obliged to confess only those
which we know and feel in our hearts. — (Small
Catechism.)

The eleventh article of the confession of Augsburg
teaches that " in the church we must obtain, and not
suffer to fall into disuse the •particular absolution,
though it be not necessary to enumerate all our
crimes and faults, seeing that such a thing is
impossible."

The following passage is found in the Swedish

liturgy, which was in use at the end of the sixteenth

century, " When the rules prescribed for auricular
o

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confession, fasting days, the impediments arising
from consanguinity and affinity, and other similar
traditions were abolished, so frightful was the
libertinism which followed, that every individual,
whatever might be asserted to the contrary, believed
himself authorized to satisfy his passions instead of
submitting to salutary counsel. If you exhort them
to confess their sins, in order to test the sincerity of
their conversiony to which alone absolution should be
accorded, they reply that no person should be
constrained. Do you counsel them to observe the
fast, they indulge in all that gluttony can desire.
Do you invite them to be present on certain days at
the divine office, they answer that Christians are free
to do every day what they please. If you endeavour
to dissuade them from incest, they maintain that
tradition is not more obligatory in the new than in
the old Testament. According to the proverb, the
horses run away with the rider, and the reins no
longer govern the car. As it was the duty of our
ancestors to combat superstition, so we ought to de-
clare war against irreligion — that most fearful of all
monsters. This war should be conducted with the

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211

more care and precaution, as it is to be apprehended
that the exterior of religion may finally disappear, and
that the sacred ministry already despised by the
Anabaptists and by those who reject the sacraments,
may be so by the generality of the people, whilst
each follows his own fancy whether for the adminis-
tration or rejection of sacred things."

It is a well known fact that the Lutherans of
Nuremberg supplicated Charles V. to re-establish
among them by an edict the practice of confession.
A similar request was made by the ministers of
Strasburg, in a memorial presented by them to the
Magistrates in 1670.

But notwithstanding the efforts which Lutheranism
has made to retain the forms of confession, it has
not been able to succeed in preserving the spirit
which makes them effective. An institution so
powerful can never be upheld unless it be based
upon a principle of authority. With Catholics alone
it is a power ; with every other religion or sect it
cannot be, and in reality is but a form.

I do not mean to assert that private absolution is not
very useful remarks Calvin, on the contrary, as I have

212 GERBET ON

already done in many passages of my works, I
recommend it, provided it be free from and devoid
of superstition." (Defens ii. ad Wesphtal, torn VIII.
Free confession is a Utopian scheme.

The English Church imitates as closely as pos-
sible the Catholic institution.

Then shall the minister examine whether he repent
him [the sick person) truly of his sins, and be in
charity with all the world. * * * * Here
shall the sick person be moved to make a special
confession of his sins, if he feel his conscience
troubled with any weighty matter. After which,
the Priest shall absolve him (if he humbly and hear-
tily desire it) after this sort : —

Our Lord Jesus Christ who hath left power to
his Church to absolve all sinners who truly repent
and believe in him, of his great mercy forgive thee
thine offences : and by his authority committed to
me, I absolve thee from all thy sins, in the name
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost, — Amen. — {Vide the order for the Visitation
of the sick — Book of Common Prayer, page 274.
Printed by Eyre and Strahan, London, 1820.

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213

Leibnitz has remarked with his usual sagacity the
advantages of confession. — " It must be acknow-
ledged, says he, that this institution is worthy the
divine wisdom ; and assuredly there is nothing more
beautiful, nothing that has more claims on the
gratitude of man than the Christian religion. The
Chinese and Japanese were struck with admiration
at it. In truth, the obligation of confessing one's
sins causes many to refrain from the commission
of crime, particularly those who are not hardened
therein ; it is a source of consolation to those who
have fallen. It is for these reasons that I look on a
pious, grave and prudent confessor, as an instrument
in the hand of God for the salvation of souls ; for
his counsels serve to regulate our affections, to
enlighten us with respect to our faults, make us
avoid the occasions of sin, restore what has been
unlawfully procured, repair scandals, remove doubts,
console the dejected, and finally to heal or at least
mitigate all the maladies of the soul. If there is
nothing to be prized more than a faithful friend, how
inestimable the happiness to find one who is bound
by all the reverence due to a divine Sacrament to

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preserve inviolably the trust reposed in him, and to
aid those who stand in need of his ministry !" —
(System of Theology, page 271, Paris, 1819.)

In our days a Protestant Lady, the authoress of a
German work, entitled Mary or female piety, ex-
pressed the desire which is secretly formed by many
who are wearied from Protestantism, when she saith
" What would I not give to be able to approach the
tribunal of penance."

The observations of a distinguished writer of the
present day may be introduced here with great
propriety, as they bear a close relation to the
point in question.

It is true, we observed that the tone of intercourse in
all societies which are not Catholic, wants meekness :
but what we have to remark here is, that it wants
mercy. The acute and frank Cardan makes a strange
confession, " among my vices" said he, " I acknow-
ledge one great and singular, that I never say
anything more willingly than what will displease
the hearers ; and in this I persevere knowingly and

THE EUCHARIST.

215

willingly, though I am not ignorant how many
enemies this alone gains for me, such is the force of
nature joined to long custom."* Great he might
well term it, but excepting among a people of faith,
far from singular vice; for it is so essentially a
disposition of our fallen nature, that nothing but the
supernatural influence of Catholicism can effect a
complete cure. When that has not been applied,
every one, — the school boy, — the collegian, — the
man of drawing-rooms, — the lounger in public
places, — the young and old,— the noble and ple-
beian,— all are Cardens in that respect, and might
truly make the same confession, if they had his
honesty. Are you about to visit a country where
Luther, or Calvin, or Cranmer, or Jewell, are
the names in most repute? where there is no
such thing heard of by youth or age as confession ?
that is, in short, where the mysteries and light of
faith have been removed with the discipline of Rome ?
Then learn to stand constantly on your guard against
malice, and the shrewdness of ill natured criticism,
and the spirit which triumphs in humiliating others,
* Hieron, Cardan, de vita propria, cap, 13.

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and in spoiling, by one cunningly devised blow,
their day or hour of festivity. Lay aside the feeling
of innocent freedom with which you had been
accustomed to conduct yourself in those Catholic
lands, where men were taught, from boyhood, in the
words of St. Anthony, "that there was no greater
impiety than causing grief of any kind to others " *
where every one, young and old, rich and poor,
looked and spoke as if he joyed in kindness, and
were so averse to whatever could interrupt it, that
as we read of Andrew Doria, he would desist from
supporting his own cause, though convinced of its
justice, rather than seem to seek praise by an obstinate
disputation, f You are now with men of a different
type, who have revived the old civilization. The
spirited and burning retort is here thought, not
merely by the openly profane, but by the grave and
formal, too, as characterestic of a noble nature, and
every one is ready to reply in the style of Plautus, to
the unintentional offender." Tu contumeliam alteri

* Serm S. Antcmii,
f Sigonii de Keb. Gest. and Dorias, lib. ii.

THE EUCHARIST.

217

facias, tibi nOn dicatur ? Tarn ego homo sum quam
tu." {Vide More's Catholici or Ages of Faith-
Book VII.)

The author now cited drams the following picture
of a nation living under the influence of the
Catholic Religion. It will be the more accept-
able to the Reader, as it will serve to illustrate
that portion of the sixth chapter, where the Abbe
Gerbet introducesLordFitzwilliam,a Protestant,
describing the action of Catholicism on Society.

Hence it was that men were so slow to discover
scandals or to exaggerate offences. They did not
look with scowling eyes at things which cause only
mirth in heaven, they contemplated nature not as
Manichacans, they loved God not with the dark
narrow views of those in later times, who followed
the sophist of Geneva, but as Catholics ; that is,
they loved the just Creator and merciful Redeemer,
and therefore they loved all his creatures. They
loved men as men, and men as Christians. Imitators
of God; other Christs, they loved even those who

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seemed forgetful of their Lord ; for he, from the
depths of love's abyss, loves even those who love
him not, loves them even contaminated and deformed
not, indeed, to make them continue in that state but
to render them beautiful."

" Why, 0 man," asks Marsilius Ficinus, " do
you vituperate the world ? The world is most beau-
tiful, framed by the best and most perfect reason,
though to you, indeed it may be unclean and evil,
because you are unclean— and evil in a good world."*
They considered, notwithstanding, all the abuses that
existed, how much generosity, how much justice,
how much fear, how much love, dominates in the
life of men ; they marked the exquisite beauty and
charm of universal order, from the sports of joyous
youth upon the meadow on a summer's day, to the
tranquil meditation of the aged between cloistered
walls, faintly illumined by the dull lancet pane.
Charity looked with the eyes of a painter at the dif-
ferent pursuits and characters of men, and appre-
hending thus drew a profit from all things that it
saw. The expression of angel mildness in the little
Epist. ad Paul, Presbvt.

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219

sister, who hastens with her picture of the Madonna,
to place it in her brother's boat before his departure,
did not please it more than the fierce disdain of art
observed in the rough figure of that brother, son of
one of those christian fishermen, as old Albertus
calls them, whose youthful countenance, all deter-
mined as it was, seemed ever on the point of relaxing
into smiles. Charity saw a blessed martyr's spirit
evinced in simple and low things ; it saw the mind
after God's own heart in those who, though trained
up thus meanly, were innocent and holy, far beyond
the trick of others ; it saw constancy, courtesy,
friendship, gentleness, all wildly but most sweetly
growing in the illiterate children of the laborious
poor, whom heretics teach men to regard with the
disdain of pedants, or with a still more insulting
pity ; as if grace could not be theirs, merely, per-
haps, because they put themselves in posture that
divine nature hath suited to the words and affections
of the generous.*

I said that charity was an art, in regard to the
pleasure attending its exercise : and the remark is
* Idiotao contemp, xix.

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just also in many other respects ; for it rendered
men, in regard to conversation, like skilful painters,
by imparting to them that delicate tact which feels
the necessity of omission as well as of creation ;
which is evinced in softening down all, and covering
over some things, casting a shade over objects of
sharp brilliancy, and throwing a general, subdued,
and gentle tone over the whole surface.

" Charity was not on the lips' edge alone, but in
the heart of men who continued faithful to the
Church, and therefore no one feared malicious scru-
tiny within the dwelling of his neighbour. None
there distrusted kindness, though not promised with
an oath : for the will to bless could only fail through
want of power, such mercy was in human breasts,
you find this remarked incidentally by many of the
ancient local historians. What a delightful picture
does Ambrose Leo present of the state of society in
his native city in the fifteenth century ? "In such
harmony and friendship are the people of Nola educa-
ted," saith he, "that such things as civil feuds and
party contentions are wholly unknown to them.
The only combats they behold are the mimic battles

THE EUCHARIST.

221

of the youth, which take place annually before the
beginning of lent, the noble and plebeian promiscu-
ously joining, and which are terminated e're the
setting sun, when all are friends again, relating
their exploits to one another, or enduring their defeat
with good humour. You will hardly find, elsewhere,
so many pairs of friends as at Nola ; nor is it only
between the inhabitants that friendships abound:
they are equally prompt to embrace foreigners ; and
to this they are inclined, not through any motive of
gain, but simply from the joy which they derive from
the idea alone and from the friendship." *

Such representations of society abound in the old
writings. One ancient author, alluding to the kind-
ness and charity of the people of Amalphi, says that
throughout the whole territory one might imagine
oneself inhabiting Paradise. It was the spirit of the
blessed merciful, widely diffused and presiding over-
all movements of the social body, which produced
that concord in the state, uniting together the vast
multitude of institutions and combinations resulting

* Ambros Leo de Nola, lib i, c. 13, iii, 13, in Thesaur
Antiq. gtal. ix.

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from Catholicism into one system of harmonious
variety which seemed so admirable to the attentive
observers of former times, that one who deserved to
be ranked among them, John Babtist De Grossis,
when writing the history of his native city, entitled
it Catanense Decachordum,* as if a narrative of
its manners and institutions, its calamities and its
triumphs, would sound like the music of a lyre ;
as if each digression on a particular monastery, or
church, or hospital, or confraternity of mercy, might
be compared to a chord of that instrument, by the
extension or contraction of which the modulation of
sound would become sweeter. He strike these
chords, and we hear of the faith and piety of his
countrymen, of their ancient Nasilicas, in which
are shrined the relics of St. Agatha. We hear of
their solemn processions on the anniversaries of their
martyrs, of the antiquity and beauty of their monas-
teries, of the sanctity and learning of the holy men
within them, of the charity of abbots, of the love
shown to the mendicant and all religious orders of
seculars, whether priests or laics, and of their servi-
*Thesaur Antiq. Itali and Sicilise roni. x.

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223

ces to the poor, of the devout women, the nuns and
sisters of blessed charity, of the hermits in the
groves adjoining, who had given all their possessions
to the poor for the love of God, of the deplomas
and gifts of munificent founders, of the confraternity
of laics to serve Christ in the persons of the poor,
of the hospitals and asylums for the miserable, of
the colleges and schools of the purest esteem enter-
tained for ancient families, whose highest nobility
is derived from having so long deserved the love
and admiration of their country, of the gifts of nature,
of the works of art, to which the words of holy Jerome
are so applicable, that things revolve in the same
circle, that men should bear one another's burdens,
and that the sweat of the dead should be the delight
of the living, of the deep religious feeling with which
they loved and defended their country, too well expres -
sed in those few lines upon the shrine of the virgin
martyr, the patron of their city — "ubi orta etpassa-
regressasum, quianimis dilexi earn, et qui mecum have
non amat patriam, quese mea est, me odit," — and by
those inscribed over the city gates — * Noli offendere
patrian Agathse" — the words, it is said, which

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thrice presented themselves to the eyes of the
Emperor Frederick II, in a book of prayer which
fell into his hands while resolved upon levelling
Catsena to the ground for its fidelity to the Roman
Pontiff, and which filled him with such fear that he
relinquished his cruel intentions, and withdrew.
The chanter proceeds, and we hear of the palace of
the senators, where the robed magistrates, the mitred
fathers, the steel-clad heroes, and the illustrious citi-
zens are represented in ancient paintings ; we hear
of their loyal fidelity to their princes, of the innocent
names of their youth, of the sanctity of their great
men, of the solicitude of their pastors, from St.
Everius to Mortinus de Leon then living, whose
charity forms the last tone.

Reader, do you not perceive how easy it was for
this minstrel to fulfil what he promised, and how
confidently he might predict that his book would
resemble the music of a lyre, at one time perhaps
causing tears, at another joy, but never awaking
jealousy or envy, or other foul passions, or exciting
any affections excepting those of a heart that seeks
satiety in love? So it is with all such historic

THE EUCHARIST.

225

representations of a Catholic state during ages of
faith : they resembled harps, which you may strike
boldly without fearing to conjure up a bad spirit,
touch what chord you will. They form, in fact, a
most sweet and earthly symphony, which, whether
plaintive or joyous, is always sure to leave the souls
of the listeners more tuned to reverence and pity,
more loving and devoted — deeper imbued, in short,
with the charity of heaven. More'sCatholici, Book 7.

Perhaps there is nothing more noble, says Voltaire,
than the sacrifice made by a delicate sex of
beauty ', youth, and frequently of high rank, to
relieve that aggregate of human misery collected
in our hospitals, the very sight of which is so
humiliating to our pride and so revolting to our
delicacy — Essay on morals, c. 139.

In citing voltaire as an evidence to the exalted
but practical benevolence of the Sisters of Charity,
our Author adduces a testimony of the most unques-
tionable character to the merits of those heroic ladies:
p

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emanating as it does, from one who is avowedly
hostile to the spirit and institutions of Christianity.
That ic is within the pale of the Roman Catholic
Church alone, among all the societies which claim
the name of christian, such devotedness is to be
found, is a fact for which we have the same impartial
evidence, quoted again by our Author, viz. " The
nations separated from the Roman communion, have
but imperfectly imitated that generous charity by
which the latter is characterised."

But why refuse to hear the accredited ministers
of religion. Do not their statements, regarding the
facts and institutions of the Church with which they
are associated, and of which they possess such an
accurate knowledge, claim at least as much respect
as those of the Historian marking the political events,
and social condition of his country.

Let us attend then to Cardinal Maury explaining
the constitutions of that order whose boundless
charity could touch in his calmer and better moments
the heart of the philosopher of Fernai. He speaks
in presence of one of the most august assemblies in
the world ; and at the command of one whose virtue

THE EUCHARIST.

227

exalted royalty itself, and who proved so nobly on
the scaffold that the Religion which in the day of his
prosperity made him the friend of the Philanthro-
pist, as well as the father of the destitute, inspired
him also with the meek but heroic fortitude of the
martyr in the darkest scene of that historic tragedy
of which he was the victim.

Examine well the injunctions which the Cardinal
states to have been given by Vincent of Paul to his
religious, and after the lapse of so many years, mark
the zeal and fidelity with which they are fulfilled to
the letter at the present day by the almost innume-
rable congregations of that heroic institute spread
not only throughout Europe but America. And
after such an examination and such a survey, turn
then to the systems of beneficence dictated by
Philanthropy, or by the societies separated from the
Catholic communion, and contrasting both with the
charity of the Redeemer as displayed in the great
sacrifice of Calvary, meditate in silence on the
inference which your heart cannot fail to suggest.

" During his pastoral life at Chatillon, he formed a
charitable association of select persons to whom he

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committed the poor and the distribution of alms.
Such were the blessings with which heaven was
pleased to crown his virtuous efforts, that each of his
good works grew into a public establishment for
Religion, and according to scriptural language-^-this
little fountain grew into a very great river, and
abounded into many waters. Est. c. xi, v. x.

The confraternity for the sick, founded by
Vincent of Paul at Chatillon became the cradle of
that invaluable establishment of the sisters of charity,
whose services, be it spoken to the honor of Religion,
our age reverences, and of whom even England in
our own times has demanded colonies from France.
No other duty but an unremitting exertion for the
relief of suffering humanity is imposed upon them
by their worthy Founder. You sh'all, it is thus he
addresses them in the constitution of his order, you
shall have no other monasteries than the dwellings
of the poor, no other cloisters than the streets
of towns and wards of hospitals, no other enclosure
than obedience, no other veil than a holy modesty.
My intention, he adds, is that you assist each infirm
patient with the care of a tender mother for an only

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229

son." The tender providence of his charity extended
itself even to formally ordering them, " to cheer and
exhilarate the sick if they are too much dejected by
their sufferings."

That he might shield these humble servants of the
poor against regrets which would render them useless
by disgusting them with their state, this wise legis-
lator, desirous of preserving in so heroic an institute
an unabated ardour and zeal, does not admit them to
profession until they have passed five entire years of
probation, he then only permits them to engage
themselves by vow for one year, anxious that each
year should thus pass in the fervour of a continual
noviceship, and that they should renew before God
and man the merit of their first consecration.
Encouraged by their success, Vincent of Paul
generalizes the functions of these visible angels of
Providence, and demands from them virtues in
proportion to the public necessities, whilst he testi-
fied the esteem he cherished for them by placing them
over all his works of charity. These daughters,
worthy of so good a Father, animated by his spirit
become the mother of the orphan, devote themselves

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to the education of children, assist the sick, the
widow, the aged and infirm, visit the prisoner, the
galley slave, the bashful and retiring poor, and that
of the various sufferings of humanity, not one should
remain without its remedy ; they are to be found on
the field of battle ministering consolation to the
dying soldier. It is thus they incessantly struggle
against all the disasters which arise from indigence,
age or infirmity ; from the vices or crimes of their
fellow mortals, counting the most exalted virtues of
humanity among the ordinary actions of their state,
and fulfilling with a holy joy those works of charity
the most disgusting to nature, but the most hono-
rable in the eyes of Religion, in the city as well as in
the county, in the galleys as well as in the prisons, in
the most obscure retreats of misery as well as in the
public asylums of charity.

It was in the midst of the universal decay of
religious orders that heaven, which visibly protects
the daughters of Vincent Paul to interpose every
where their touching innocence between his justice
and human miseries, never ceased to multipy their
establishments and their success throughout Europe,

THE EUCHARIST.

231

It is the devoted family of Providence which diffuses
itself through all parts to justify on the lips of the
unhappy this sublime prayer, the depth of which
man can feel and appreciate only in the hour of
affliction, when he appeals to God through this
tutelary adoption for peace and consolation — Our
Father, who art in Heaven.

Yes, doubtless, children of affliction, you have a
Father in heaven, since he is represented even on
the earth by so many humane and heroic mothers.

Bless then for ever that benevolent spirit who in
bequeathing to you their charitable succour again
restored you to your divine affiliation. It is by the
maternal solicitude of the virtuous daughters of
Vincent of Paul whom he so justly styled the daugh-
ters of Charity herself, that you recognize the
paternity of your God in receiving every day from
their hands a portion of his inheritence. (Panegyric
of St. Vincent of Paul — preached by Cardinal Maury
by order and in presence of Louis XVI, in the Royal
Chapel of Versailles— March 4, 1785.

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After the gratifying account given by the Cardinal
of the origin of this institute, as well as of its
extensive and beneficent operation, the reader
may not object to the portrait of Sister of
Charity, as she exists in our own days and in
our own country, by one of considerable celebrity
in the literary world, and who lately devoted to
religion, talents and acquirements of the first
order.

THE SISTER OF CHARITY.

She once was a lady of honor and wealth,

Bright glow'd in her features the roses of health ;
Her vesture was blended of silk and of gold,

And her motion shook perfume from every fold ;
Joy revelled around her — love shone at her side,

And gay was her smile as the glance of a bride ;
And light was her step in the mirth sounding hall,

When she heard of the daughters of Vincent de Paul.

She felt in her spirit the summons of grace,

That call'd her to live for the suffering race ;
And, heedlesss of pleasure, of comfort, of home,

Rose quickly, like Mary, and answered, "I come."
She put from her person the trappings of pride,

And pass'd from her home with the joy of a bride,
Nor wept at the treshold as onward she moved —

For her heart was on fire in the cause it approved,

THE EUCHARIST.

Lost ever to fashion — to vanity lost,

That beauty that once was the libertine's toast —
No more in the ball-room that figure we meet,

But gliding at dusk to the wretch's retreat.
Forgot in the halls is that high sounding name,

For the Sister of Charity blushes at fame :
Forgot are the claims of her riches and birth,

For she barters for heaven the glory of earth.

Those feet that to music could gracefully move,

Now bear her alone on the mission of love ;
Those hands, that once dangled the perfume and gem,

Are tending the helpless, or lifted for them ;
That voice that once echoed the song of the vain,

Now whispers relief to the bosom of pain ;
And the hair that was shining with diamond and pearl,

Is wet with the tears of the penitent girl.

Her down-bed a pallat — her trinket a bead —

Her lustre one taper, that serves her to read —
Her sculpture, the crucifix nailed by her bed,

Her paintings, one print of the thorn-crown'd head ;
Her cushion, the pavement that wearies her knees,

Her music, the psalm, or the sigh of disease ;
The delicate lady lives mortified there,

And the feast is forsaken for fasting and prayer.

Yet not to the service of heart and of mind,

Are the cares of that heaven-minded virgin confined
Like him whom she loves to the mansions of grief,

She hastes with the tidings of joy and relief.
She strengthens the weary — she comforts the weak,

And soft is her voice in the ear of the sick ;
Where want and affliction on mortals attend,

The Sister of Charity there is a friend.

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Unshrinking where pestilence scatters his breath,

Like an angel she moves 'mid the vapors of death ;
Where rings the long musket and flashes the sword,

Unfearing she walks, for she follows her Lord.
How sweetly she bends- o'er each plague-tainted face,

With looks that are lighted with holiest grace ;
How kindly she dresses each suffering limb,

For she sees in the wounded the image of Him.

Behold her, ye wordly ! — behold her, ye vain,

Who shrink from the pathway of virtue and pain ;
Who yield up to pleasure your nights and your days,

Forgetful of service, forgetful of praise.
Ye lazy philosophers, self seeking men —

Ye fireside philanthropists, great at the pen,
How stands in the balance your eloquence weigh'd

With the life and the deeds of that high-born maid ?

THE EUCHARIST.

235

APPENDIX II.

Hence the three principal fractions of Protestant-
ism are distinguished by a corresponding relation
to piety, as they recede from or approximate to
the generative dogma of Catholic piety. This
law, which may be demonstrated by the history
of many ancient sects, shewed itself in Jansen-
ism, the last of modern heresies.

" Of the want of real piety among the sects separ-
ated from the Church of Christ. The following
apposite illustrations by the author of the Ages of
Faith cannot fail to strike every candid mind."

Notwithstanding vague and abstract professions,
they have proceeded virtually to place the highest
good in material prosperity, in the sciences, in the
mechanical arts, which minister to temporal comfort
and convenience. They never view the course of
time and the affairs of empires from the height of

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heavenly meditation, which despises the world to
follow Christ ; a crucifix so far from being an epi-
tome of their creed, is its refutation. Their maxims
are drawn from the wisdom, or even the conventional
caprice of the world ; the virtues which they praise
are all such as the gentiles praised. The practical
results of Christ's sermon on the beatitudes are
either never spoken of, or else dismissed with con-
tempt, as so many popish observances, or even per-
haps as vestiges of Paganism, old oriental errors,
utterly at variance with all enlightened views.
Hence they are more conversant with Cicero than
St. Augustin, with Horace than with the sacred poets
of the Church. The author of the Imitation, if tried
by their principles, has probably shown himself igno-
rant of every thing that a philosopher ought to
know. By an involuntary impulse resulting from
habit, they are every moment calling in question the
very elements of the christian faith — every moment
supposing that their own mind, as well as that of the
person with whom they converse, is a tabula rosa ;
as Evrard says of the Waldenses : " affirming no-
thing, but proposing every thing as a matter of

THE EUCHARIST.

237

doubt, saying, thus we think, thus we imagine : it
seems so to us, perhaps it is so :*" or else they are
dogmatizing, and laying down maxims contrary to
faith, with an air of knowing more than they choose
to express, as if being withheld from speaking more
strongly only by courteous forbearance ; as the Ca-
thari are described by Pope Innocent III. " Sub
quadam humilitatis specie sui elationem animi palli-
antes.f

* Evrard, cont. Wsld. c. 13, f Epist. ix. 135.

ERRATA.

Page 52, line 19, for "cleaves the maternal bosom," read

" cleaves to the maternal bosom."

— 83, last line, for " vide note xi," read " vide note x."

94, second last line, for "vide note xii," read "vide

note xi."